After supper she told me that she was tired, and would withdraw. I went with her to her room, and when there she told me that she had been telling the Bishop about her scheme for a nunnery, and that he had put another plan in her head, namely, to turn her house near Exeter into a refuge for orphan girls from the city, where they might be trained to usefulness and piety, and fitted to earn an honest and comfortable living. "He says," she continued, "that I might always have six or eight such young maidens in my family, and he would have me live among them myself, and oversee them. Is not that a pretty castle in the air?" she added, sorrowfully smiling. "Indeed, I think it a much prettier one than your nunnery," I answered, "and one much more easy to erect on firm ground." "Aye," said she. "My sisterhood has turned out finely, with one sister marrying a priest, and another a Presbyterian." (For it is quite settled now that Mrs. Priscilla and Mr. Penrose are to make a match of it. I need not have been so distressed at breaking the poor man's heart. 'Tis something easier mended than Betty's china image.) "But I feel myself unfitted for such a work and responsibility, otherwise I would welcome the suggestion at once. As it is, I shall not put it away, but consider upon it, and consult my sister." I do hope the plan will succeed. I am sure Lady Jemima will be better and happier in a house of her own than she is here, and also that this house will be better without her. The desire for employment and for doing good, which here makes her only troublesome, will be well laid out on a family of her own. _December 10._ My dear child seems better again, and once more goes about the house, and looks after her fowls and other pets, and nurses her little brothers, though the latter not so much as she would like, because their weight makes her shoulder ache. Still I am very uneasy about her. She grows thin, and has a little cough, and two or three times she has had something like a fainting fit, save that her face turns brownish instead of pale. She is wonderful happy in her spirit, and all her old irritability seems entirely gone. The great painter is come, and is at work on Walter's and his mother's pictures. He is a wonderful courtly gentleman, with a quick eye, which nothing escapes. He hath already expressed a wish to paint Betty, saying that she has one of the most lovely and touching faces he ever saw: to which my Lord and Lady gave their consent, and are mightily pleased, as is Betty herself. But Mary does not like it at all, and says she hopes there may be nothing wrong, but it stands to reason that the gentleman cannot put so much life into his pictures without taking it out of the people he paints; and that Betty has none to spare, she being weakly already. I think Mrs. Judith is much of the same mind, though she will not own it.