From Partney the hill rises to Dalby, where lived John Bourne, whose wife was an aunt of the young Tennysons, and here they would meet the handsome Miss Bournes of Alford; one, Margaret, was dark, the other was Alice, a beautiful fair girl. They married brothers, Marcus and John Huish. Mrs. John Bourne was the Doctor's sister Mary, and the young Tennysons would have been oftener at Dalby had it been their Aunt Elizabeth Russell[10] who lived there, of whom they always spoke in terms of the strongest affection. The old house at Dalby was burnt down in 1841. About this Mr. Marcus Huish tells me that his mother wrote in a diary at the time: _Jan. 5, 1841._--On this day Dalby House, the seat of the Bournes, and round whose simple Church, standing embosomed in trees, my family, including my dear sister Mary Hannah, lie buried, was burnt to the ground; and on the 7th Mrs. Huish wrote: I have this morning received intelligence that the dear House at Dalby was on Tuesday night burnt down, and is now a wreck. I feel very deeply this disastrous circumstance, endeared as it was to me by ties of time and association. Mr. Tennyson has written to me as follows on this catastrophe. The letter was a long one, two pages being left for it in the diary, but unfortunately it was never copied in. The villages here are very close together, and going from Partney, two miles eastward, you come to Skendleby, where Sir Edward Brackenbury lived, whose elder brother Sir John was Consul at Cadiz, and used to send over some good pictures and some strong sherry, known by the diners-out as "the Consul's sherry." The Rector of the next village of Scremby was also a Brackenbury, and here Mary Tennyson most loved to visit. Mrs. Brackenbury, whom she always calls "Gloriana," was adored by all who knew her. Mary says, "She is so sweet a character, and she has always been so kind and so anxious for our family ... I look upon her as already a saint." Two of the Rectors of Halton had also been Brackenburys--a father and son in succession, and they were followed by two generations of Rawnsleys--Thomas Hardwicke and his son Drummond. Adjoining Scremby is Candlesby, where Tennyson's genial friend, John Alington, who had married another of the beautiful Miss Bellinghams, was Rector; and within half a mile is Gunby, the delightful old home of the Massingberds. In Dr. Tennyson's time Peregrine Langton, who had married the heiress of the Massingberds and taken her name, was living there.