“And at last the change came. My father went again to London and lost—I think, I have always thought so—more money.... Then one by one our visitors departed; and my father, who had returned in haste again, in equal haste left home, after short interviews with landlords, and lawyers, and auctioneers; and I knew—I can’t tell how, but I did know—that everything was to be parted with and everybody paid. “That same night two or three large chests were carried away through the garden by George and another old servant, and a day or two after my mother and myself, with Mrs. Mosse, the good housekeeper who lived with my grandfather, and the other maid-servant, left Lyme in a hack-chaise.” After various delays, due partly to the breaking up of a camp between Bridport and Dorchester, the party pursued their journey in “a sort of tilted cart without springs.” “Doubtless,” remarks Mary, “many a fine lady would laugh at such a shift. But it was not as a temporary discomfort that it came upon my poor mother. It was her first touch of poverty. It seemed like the final parting from all the elegances and all the accommodations to which she had been used. I shall never forget her heart-broken look when she took her little girl upon her lap in that jolting caravan, nor how the tears stood in her eyes when we turned into our miserable bedroom when we reached the roadside alehouse where we were to pass the night. The next day we resumed our journey, and reached a dingy, comfortless lodging in one of the suburbs beyond Westminster Bridge.” CHAPTER VII A FLIGHT The “comfortless lodging” mentioned by Miss Mitford was on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, where Dr. Mitford, it seems, was able to find a refuge from his creditors within the rules of the King’s Bench. “What my father’s plans were,” writes his daughter in later years, “I do not exactly know; probably to gather together what disposable money still remained after paying all debts from the sale of books, plate and furniture at Lyme and thence to proceed ... to practise in some distant town. At all events London was the best starting-place, and he could consult his old fellow-pupil and life-long friend, Dr. Babington, then one of the physicians to Guy’s Hospital, and refresh his medical studies with experiments and lectures. In the meanwhile his spirits returned as buoyant as ever, and so, now that fear had changed into certainty, did mine.” [Illustration: BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE (1796)] But at this time, when the prospects of the family seemed to be irretrievably overclouded and when dire poverty stared them in the face, an extraordinary event occurred to raise them suddenly into affluence!