"
"I had very pretty hair, my dear," said Mist Matilda; "and not a
bad mouth." And I saw her soon afterwards adjust her cap and draw
herself up.
But to return to Mrs Jenkyns's letters. She told her husband about
the poor in the parish; what homely domestic medicines she had
administered; what kitchen physic she had sent. She had evidently
held his displeasure as a rod in pickle over the heads of all the
ne'er-do-wells. She asked for his directions about the cows and
pigs; and did not always obtain them, as I have shown before.
The kind old grandmother was dead when a little boy was born, soon
after the publication of the sermon; but there was another letter
of exhortation from the grandfather, more stringent and admonitory
than ever, now that there was a boy to be guarded from the snares
of the world. He described all the various sins into which men
might fall, until I wondered how any man ever came to a natural
death. The gallows seemed as if it must have been the termination
of the lives of most of the grandfather's friends and acquaintance;
and I was not surprised at the way in which he spoke of this life
being "a vale of tears."
It seemed curious that I should never have heard of this brother
before; but I concluded that he had died young, or else surely his
name would have been alluded to by his sisters.
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