“We sat down sixty-five to dinner.... The dinner of course was served on plate, and the middle of the table was decorated by a sumptuous _plateau_. I met Sir Charles Monck, my cousin of Mitford, and several people I had known at Little Harle. After dinner when the Duchess found Lady Charles absolutely refused to stay all night, she resolved at least that I should see the Castle, and sent Lady Emily to show me the library, chapel, state bedrooms, etc., and, thinking I was fond of dancing, she persuaded Lady C. to go for an hour with herself and family to the Sessions Ball, which was held that night. “The Duchess is still a most lovely woman, and dresses with particular elegance. She wore a helmet of diamonds. The young ladies were elegantly dressed in white and gold. The news of Lord Percy’s election arrived after dinner. “At nine we went to the ball given in the town, and the room was so bad and the heat so excessive that I determined, considering the long journey we had to take, not to dance, and refused my cousin Mitford of Mitford, Mr. Selby, Mr. Alder, and half a dozen whose names I have forgotten. At half-past ten we took leave of the Duchess and her amiable daughters and commenced our journey homeward.... “We went on very quietly for some time when we suddenly discovered that we had come about six miles out of our way.... This so much delayed us that it was near seven o’clock in the morning before we reached home [Morpeth]. Seventy miles, a splendid dinner and a ball all in one day! Was not this a spirited expedition?” Mary was well placed for enjoyment during this tour. “My cousins,” she writes in later life, “were acquainted, as it seemed to me, with everyone of consequence in the county, and were themselves two of the most popular persons it contained, [so] as the young relative and companion of this amiable couple, I saw the country and its inhabitants to great advantage.” Mary mentions two younger sisters of Lady Charles—Mary and Charlotte Mitford—cousins of whom she became fond. They often accompanied the travellers in their visiting tours, as did also the Aynsleys’ only son, whom she speaks of as her father’s “dear godson, and the finest boy you ever saw.” Writing from Morpeth, where her father’s uncle, old Mr. Mitford, and her cousins lived, she speaks of a plan for a tour in the northern part of the county arranged by Sir Charles and Lady Aynsley for her entertainment. “When I go back to Little Harle,” she says, “we shall set out for Admiral Roddam’s upon the Cheviot Hills, Lord Tankerville’s and Lord Grey’s.... I am so happy in this opportunity of seeing the Cheviot Hills.” The tour proved a very pleasant and interesting one. The party travelled in a coach and four, the road sometimes taking them across the summit of the Cheviots and “above the clouds.” They visited Fallerton and Simonsburn and also Hexham—her father’s birthplace—finally halting at Alnwick.