The things we do!

The house is a Norfolk house. Mrs. Ridley was housekeeper to the great
Squire Bayham, who had the estate before the Conqueror, and who came to
such a dreadful crash in the year 1825, the year of the panic. Bayhams
still belongs to the family, but in what a state, as those can say who
recollect it in its palmy days! Fifteen hundred acres of the best
land in England were sold off: all the timber cut down as level as a
billiard-board. Mr. Bayham now lives up in one corner of the house, which
used to be filled with the finest company in Europe. Law bless you! the
Bayhams have seen almost all the nobility of England come in and go out,
and were gentlefolks when many a fine lord's father of the present day
was sweeping a counting-house.
The house will hold genteelly no more than these two inmates; but in the
season it manages to accommodate Miss Cann, who too was from Bayhams,
having been a governess there to the young lady who is dead, and who now
makes such a livelihood as she can best raise, by going out as a daily
teacher.


Pages:
265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289