Mrs. Allison had been able to do little for her daughter of that little, which, if her state of health and spirits had permitted, she might have done; this, therefore, as well as the more active duties of the household, devolved upon Elizabeth, who was of a better constitution in mind as well as body. Elizabeth, before she went to reside with her brother, had acquired all the accomplishments which a domestic education in the country could in those days impart. Her book of receipts, culinary and medical, might have vied with the “Queen's Cabinet Unlocked.” The spelling indeed was such as ladies used in the reign of Queen Anne, and in the old time before her, when every one spelt as she thought fit; but it was written in a well-proportioned Italian hand, with fine down-strokes and broad up-ones, equally distinct and beautiful. Her speech was good Yorkshire, that is to say, good provincial English, not the worse for being provincial, and a little softened by five and twenty years residence in London. Some sisters, who in those days kept a boarding school of the first repute in one of the midland counties, used to say, when they spoke of an old pupil, “_her went to school to we_.” Miss Allison's language was not of this kind,—it savoured of rusticity, not of ignorance; and where it was peculiar, as in the metropolis, it gave a raciness to the conversation of an agreeable woman. She had been well instructed in ornamental work as well as ornamental penmanship. Unlike most fashions, this had continued to be in fashion because it continued to be of use; though no doubt some of the varieties which Taylor the Water-Poet enumerates in his praise of the Needle, might have been then as little understood as now: Tent-work, Raised-work, Laid-work, Prest-work, Net-work. Most curious Pearl, or rare Italian Cut-work, Fine Fern-stitch, Finny-stitch, New-stitch and Chain-stitch, Brave Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Irish-stitch and Queen-stitch, The Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch and Maw-stitch, The smarting Whip-stitch, Back-stitch and the Cross-stitch. All these are good, and these we must allow; And these are every where in practice now. There was a book published in the Water Poet's days, with the title of “School House for the Needle;” it consisted of two volumes in oblong quarto, that form being suited to its plates “of sundry sorts of patterns and examples;” and it contained a “Dialogue in Verse between Diligence and Sloth.” If Betsey Allison had studied in this “School House,” she could not have been a greater proficient with the needle than she became under her Aunt's teaching: nor would she have been more ——versed in the arts Of pies, puddings and tarts,[2]