There were some twenty or thirty poor old infirm cottagers, men and women, who had been for years weekly pensioners on the bounty of Yatton, and respecting whom Mr. Aubrey felt a painful anxiety. What could he do? He gave the sum of fifty pounds to Dr. Tatham for their use; and requested him to press their claims earnestly upon the new proprietor of Yatton. He also wrote almost as many letters, as there were of these poor people, on their behalf to his friends and neighbors. Oh, it was a moving scene which had occurred at each of their little cottages, when their benefactors, Mr. Aubrey, his wife, and sister, severally called to bid them farewell, and receive their humble and tearful blessings! But it was the parting with her school, which neither Kate nor her brother saw any probability of being kept up longer than for a month or two after their departure, which had occasioned Kate the greatest distress. There were several reasons, which will occur to the reader, why no application could be made, about the matter, from her, or on her account, to Mr. Titmouse; even if she had not had reason to anticipate, from what she had heard of his character, that he was a person unlikely to feel any interest in such an institution. Nor had she liked to trouble or burden the friends whom she left behind her, with the responsibility of supporting and superintending her little establishment. She had nothing for it, therefore, but to prepare the mistress, and her scholars, for the breaking up of the school, within a month of her departure from Yatton. She gave the worthy woman, the mistress, a present of a five-pound note; and five shillings to each of the children. She felt quite unequal to the task of personally taking leave of them, as she had intended, and several times attempted. She therefore, with many tears, wrote the following lines, and gave them to Dr. Tatham, to read aloud in the school, when their good and beautiful writer should be far on her way towards London. The little doctor paused a good many times while he read it, and complained of his glasses.