The Fordyce
family might be interesting, but we younger ones could not forget
the slight to Clarence, and, besides, the girls seemed to be
entirely in the schoolroom, Mrs. Fordyce was delicate and was shut
up all the winter, and the only intercourse that took place was when
my father met the elder Mr. Fordyce at the magistrates' bench; also
there was a conference about Amos Bell, who was preferred to the
post left vacant by George Sims, in right of his being our tenant,
but more civilised than Earlscombers, a widow's son, and not
sufficiently recovered from his accident to be exposed to the severe
tasks of a ploughboy in the winter.
Mrs. Fordyce was the manager of a book-club, which circulated
volumes covered in white cartridge paper, with a printed list of the
subscribers' names. Two volumes at a time might be kept for a month
by each member in rotation, novels were excluded, and the manager
had a veto on all orders. We found her more liberal than some of
our other neighbours, who looked on our wants and wishes with
suspicion as savouring of London notions. Happily we could read old
books and standard books over again, and we gloated over Blackwood
and the Quarterly, enjoying, too, every out-of-door novelty of the
coming spring, as each revealed itself. Emily will never forget her
first primroses, nor I the first thrush in early morning.
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