“Employment is a blessed state, it is to the body what sleep is to the mind.... I cannot be sorry when I hear that you are fully employed. I am sure it will be usefully.... I feel I can bear your being so far and so entirely away with some philosophy, and I am delighted that your letters bear the tone of content, and that you have been taken notice of by people who seem disposed to be kind to you.... Give an old man’s love to all your pupils and may they make their fathers as happy as you do.” The difficulties at Casterton, however, did not grow less, but tended rather to increase. Her parents began to have some inkling of these, and to feel very doubtful whether she ought to stay at Casterton. On her birthday, March 21, her father wrote again:-- “God bless you and give you many birthdays. I fear the present is not one of the most agreeable: it is spent at least in the path of what you consider duty, and so will never be looked back upon but with pleasure.... Do not, however, my dear girl, think of remaining long in a position which may be irksome to you, for thus, I think, it will hardly be profitable to others, and indeed I question whether you would maintain your health where the employment was so great and duty the only stimulus to action. You have heard me often quote: ‘The hand’s best sinew ever is the heart’.” Two months later Mr. Beale wrote:-- “I long to see you again very much. I cannot get reconciled to your position and feel satisfied that it is your place.... God bless you, my dear girl, and blunt your feelings for the rubs of the world, and quicken your vision for the beautiful and unseen of the world above you.” The sensitiveness her father alludes to in this letter was one of Dorothea Beale’s leading characteristics to the end of her life. Though she welcomed and considered the criticism of competent people and often acted on it she had a curiously sensitive shrinking from adverse judgment: and this often cut her off from valuable advice. Her shyness, too, kept her from the friendship of those who, like herself, were too diffident to make advances. In it, however, lay one of her chief powers, the subtle perception that enabled her to see almost into the very souls of the girls she taught. Once, at Cheltenham, a child refused to admit that she had done wrong. One morning Dorothea Beale sent for the class teacher. “Send So-and-So to me,” she said, “I can see from her face this morning that she will tell me all.” And she was right. It was at Casterton that she adopted the simple style of dress that she always preferred. One of her pupils thus describes her:-- “Her appearance, as I remember it then, was charming. Her figure was of medium height. The rather pale oval face, high, broad forehead, large, expressive grey eyes, all showed intellectual character. Her dress was remarkable in its neatness. She wore black cashmere in the week, and a pretty mouse-coloured grey dress on Sundays.”