Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon had a kitchen as well as a flower-garden. They had a white cow in the paddock in summer for their own and their baby’s use, and they borrowed a brood of chickens from Miss Kingscote, that they might be sure of new-laid eggs for breakfast. The ladies did not commit these acquisitions to their establishment entirely to the care of their modest retinue of two maids and a man. Lady Bell learnt, and did not dream that the learning was derogatory to her, to pull peas and pick gooseberries—actually to milk the cow (in a perfunctory and not very effectual manner, it must be confessed), so that she could aver from her personal knowledge that the syllabub, which she had also made with her own hands, was compounded as it ought to have been, of milk warm from the cow. She made gooseberry-fool, as well as syllabub, and was very conceited about the deed and its success. Had poor Squire Trevor been alive and at Summerhill, his flighty young wife could even have supplied him with his desiderated tansy pudding, at this higher stage of her education, and in her greater wisdom. Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell dabbled in all sorts of washes, balsams, simples, hot drinks, blackberry cheeses, and sticks of saffron. Not being godless selfish unbelievers, and having ignorant and helpless poor neighbours, the two ladies became in their own way unquestionable Christian Ladies Bountiful—clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, tending the sick, and softening the rude, so far as their light and power went. Lady Bell and Mrs. Sundon were the two women of highest rank and polish for a considerable circuit of miles, but they were not on that account disdainful and unsocial in their intercourse with their middle-class neighbours, such as the Vicar and Mayor of Lumley, the retired military or naval officers and their families, who occupied good houses in the town, and cottages similar to Summerhill on the outskirts. On the contrary, the two ladies were rightly judged models of urbanity, a reputation which no doubt they enjoyed, being gracious where nobody presumed on their graciousness, while they countenanced the Lumley weddings, house-warmings, and christenings. Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell had a hay-making on their own lawn, to which the whole population, so far as the Summerhill grounds would hold them, were invited, and came and went in ecstasies with the entertainment. Mrs. Sundon and Lady Bell became the reigning toasts of the neighbourhood. It does not follow that the old world and the old town were sycophantish; consider the women and their circumstances. Lady Bell Trevor, the daughter of Lord Etheredge and the widow of Squire Trevor, of Trevor Court, in the adjoining shire, was a beautiful, graceful, intelligent young woman of seventeen.