“[At last] we drew back to the hall, a large square bricked apartment, with a beam across the ceiling and a wide yawning chimney, where many young people being assembled, and one of them producing a fiddle, it was agreed to have a country dance until dinner should be ready, the bride and bridegroom leading off, and I following with the bridegroom’s man. “Oh! the blunders, the confusion, the merriment of that country dance! No two people attempted the same figure; few aimed at any figure at all; each went his own way; many stumbled, some fell, and everybody capered, laughed and shouted at once!” [Illustration] CHAPTER IV EARLY LIFE IN READING Towards the end of the year 1791, before the little Mary had become quite four years old, a change came over the fortunes of the family. Dr. Mitford, in spite of some really good qualities, was of a careless and thoughtless disposition as regards money matters, and was, unhappily, addicted to games of chance. “He had the misfortune,” writes his daughter, “to be the best whist player in England,” and like the celebrated Mr. Micawber and so many of his class, he had an unchanging faith in his own “good luck,” and felt confident that however dark the horizon might be something would turn up to his advantage. “Dr. Mitford,” remarks a shrewd writer, “belonged to that class of impecunious individuals who seem to have been born insolvent.” He had come into possession of a large fortune on his marriage, for his bride-elect had refused to have any settlement made concerning property under her own control, and this fortune had already nearly melted away. In spite, however, of all his thoughtless extravagance, from which both wife and child suffered severely, they remained at all times devoted to him. As she grew older Mary could not shut her eyes to her father’s faults; but she loved him in spite of them, dwelling constantly in her writings upon his invariable kindness to her as a child, which claimed, she considered, her lasting gratitude. “He possessed indeed,” she remarks, “every manly and generous quality, excepting that which is so necessary in this workaday world—the homely quality called prudence.” On leaving Alresford, where many of their valued possessions had to be sold, the little family removed to a house in Southampton Street, Reading, where the doctor hoped to establish a practice. This street, which crosses the river Kennet by a stone bridge, has still an old-world appearance, with its modest-looking dwelling-houses and its old-fashioned inns; while high above its roofs rises the spire of the old church of St. Giles. [Illustration: SOUTHAMPTON STREET]