Fortunately, his sisters did not forget him and sent him their pocket-money. It was all he had to live on. Elizabeth at Field Place was too well watched to do anything, but the younger girls were now at Mrs. Fenning’s Academy for Young Ladies on Clapham Common, and very soon Mrs. Fenning’s pupils made acquaintance with the fine eyes, the open shirt-collar and tossed curls of Hellen Shelley’s wonderful brother. He would arrive, his pockets bulging with biscuits and raisins, and begin to discourse on ultimate themes to an adoring circle of little girls. He had undertaken to “illuminate” the prettiest amongst them. He could not endure the idea that so much loveliness should be abandoned to “prejudices.” He admired most of all his sisters’ greatest friend, Harriet Westbrook, a lovely child of sixteen, with light brown hair and a complexion of milk and roses. She was small, slightly and delicately formed, and had an air of youthful gaiety, of delicious freshness. She came to the rescue when Mrs. Fenning, acting on the orders of Timothy Shelley, requested Percy to visit his sisters less often. Harriet, whose family lived in Chapel Street, Mayfair, often went home: the little sisters, therefore, entrusted her with the cakes and the money intended for Percy, and she taking these to the hermit of Poland Street, the two young people became naturally the greatest friends. Harriet Westbrook’s father was a retired publican; he had made money, and desired to give his youngest daughter a genteel education. Her mother was dead, and she had been brought up by Eliza, a much older sister. One can easily imagine the interest which the Westbrook family took in the grandson of a baronet, the heir to an immense fortune, who was beautiful as a young god, lived in lodgings on bread and pudding raisins, and to whom the youngest of the Westbrook girls carried his sisters’ pocket-money to prevent him from starving to death. Eliza being keen to see the hero, Harriet took her with her on the next visit. Shelley was somewhat intimidated by the elder Miss Westbrook, a mature virgin, dried-up and bony, with a dead-white skin seamed with scars, and fish-like eyes that stared without intelligence, the whole crowned with an immense crop of black hair. Eliza was particularly proud of her hair. Her affected manners were in striking contrast with Harriet’s spontaneous gaiety. But Bysshe soon forgot she was plain when he saw that her intentions were friendly. Not only she made no objection, as might have been feared, to Harriet’s visits to Poland Street, but she offered to bring her there, and on several occasions invited Shelley to come and dine with them when Mr. Westbrook was away. She completely won the heart of the young philosopher by asking to share with Harriet in his teaching, and undertook to read the _Philosophical Dictionary_ under his guidance.