There was founded at Lincoln a Farmer Society of some kind, and the ladies met once a week or thereabouts and played easy Bach to each other, and one of the most rapturous Lincoln days was a certain wet afternoon, when the Society met at the Chancery. My sisters and I were allowed to sit in the window-seat, provided we remained quiet, and we all had acid drops to suck, and books to read when we got tired of listening. They were soon deep in _Little Women_ and _Good Wives_, but for me, in spite of a tooth-ache, I listened in an entranced bliss to a series of Gavottes and Sarabands and Allemandes, while the rain beat on the windows, and the melodious dusk gathered. The time of the year must have been near Christmas, for I feel as if I went straight from there to the nursery, on the floor of which was laid out a large sheet piled with holly and laurel and ivy, out of which we made wreaths for the doors. The remaining leaves, when all was done, were put in the fire and roared and crackled up the chimney, filling the room with an aromatic smell of burning, that ranks next in preciousness of recollection to the smell of lilac. It was in this last year at Lincoln that I had a fit of demoniacal possession, for I committed three heinous crimes one after the other. On a shelf in the drawing-room with Dresden figures and vases there was an Easter egg which had been sent to my father. It was decorated with a cross and a crown and a halo and some flowers, and was without doubt a goose’s egg. This trophy was singularly sacred, and my father had told us that we were never to touch it. Because of that prohibition I wetted my finger and rubbed off a piece of the crown and the halo. I followed this up by stealing a quantity of sugar from the tea-table in a yellow box which I think had contained sweetmeats, and kept it on my knees under the table-cloth. I suppose I then forgot about it and, getting up, I caused it to fall to the ground, and spill its contents all over the floor.