Admiral Griffith could not tear himself from his warm rooms and his
club, but our antiquarian friend, Mr. Stafford, came with his wife,
and revelled in the ceilings of the mullion room, where he would
much have liked to sleep, but that its accommodations were only fit
for a bachelor.
Our other visitor was Miss Selby, or rather Mrs. Sophia Selby, as
she designated herself, according to the becoming fashion of elderly
spinsters, which to my mind might be gracefully resumed. It irked
my father to think of the good lady's solitary Christmas at Bath,
and he asked her to come to us. She travelled half-way in a post-
chaise, and then was met by the carriage. A very nice old lady she
was, with a meek, delicate babyish face, which could not be spoilt
by the cap of the period, one of the most disfiguring articles of
head gear ever devised, though nobody thought so then. She was full
of kindness; indeed, if she had a fault it was the abundant pity she
lavished on me, and her determination to amuse me. The weather was
of the kind that only the healthy and hardy could encounter, and
when every one else was gone out, and I was just settling in with a
new book, or an old crabbed Latin document, that Mr. Stafford had
entrusted to me to copy out fairly and translate, she would glide in
with her worsted work on a charitable mission to enliven poor Mr.
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