When Eleanor Ormerod appeared at archery meetings and croquet tournaments young men pulled their whiskers and young ladies looked grave. It was so difficult to make friends with a girl who could talk of nothing but black beetles and earwigs—“Yes, that’s what she likes, isn’t it queer?—Why, the other day Ellen, Mama’s maid, heard from Jane, who’s under-kitchenmaid at Sedbury House, that Eleanor tried to boil a beetle in the kitchen saucepan and he wouldn’t die, and swam round and round, and she got into a terrible state and sent the groom all the way to Gloucester to fetch chloroform—all for an insect, my dear!—and she gives the cottagers shillings to collect beetles for her—and she spends hours in her bedroom cutting them up—and she climbs trees like a boy to find wasps’ nests—oh, you can’t think what they don’t say about her in the village—for she does look so odd, dressed anyhow, with that great big nose and those bright little eyes, so like a caterpillar herself, I always think—but of course she’s wonderfully clever and very good, too, both of them. Georgiana has a lending library for the cottagers, and Eleanor never misses a service—but there she is—that short pale girl in the large bonnet. Do go and talk to her, for I’m sure I’m too stupid, but you’d find plenty to say—” But neither Fred nor Arthur, Henry nor William found anything to say— “. . . probably the lecturer would have been equally well pleased had none of her own sex put in an appearance.” This comment upon a lecture delivered in the year 1889 throws some light, perhaps, upon archery meetings in the ’fifties. It being nine o’clock on a February night some time about 1862 all the Ormerods were in the library; Mr. Ormerod making architectural designs at a table; Mrs. Ormerod lying on a sofa making pencil drawings upon grey paper; Eleanor making a model of a snake to serve as a paper weight; Georgiana making a copy of the font in Tidenham Church; some of the others examining books with beautiful illustrations; while at intervals someone rose, unlocked the wire book case, took down a volume for instruction or entertainment, and perused it beneath the chandelier. Mr. Ormerod required complete silence for his studies. His word was law, even to the dogs, who, in the absence of their master, instinctively obeyed the eldest male person in the room. Some whispered colloquy there might be between Mrs. Ormerod and her daughters— “The draught under the pew was really worse than ever this morning, Mama—” “And we could only unfasten the latch in the chancel because Eleanor happened to have her ruler with her—” “—hm—m—m. Dr. Armstrong—Hm—m—m—” “—Anyhow things aren’t as bad with us as they are at Kinghampton. They say Mrs. Briscoe’s Newfoundland dog follows her right up to the chancel rails when she takes the sacrament—” “And the turkey is still sitting on its eggs in the pulpit.”