There were some things, however, not so easily dropped as Grocombe--and these were its inhabitants. Letitia had five brothers, such a number for a young woman on her promotion, whose aspirations were so far removed from anything they could understand. They could all ride like centaurs, they could doctor horses as well as any vet., harness them as well as any groom, and were as conversant with the pedigrees of their quadruped nobility as the Garter-King-at-Arms is with the precedence and qualifications of dukes and earls. Letitia was not unaware that knowledge of this kind is sometimes very valuable, and that in the society of a hunting country it is much esteemed. She knew there were distinguished houses in the neighborhood in which the stud-groom was a person highly prized for his conversation and social qualities; and on such a dreadful emergency as the appearance of Will, or Jack, or Ted, or Harry at Greenpark, she had already settled in her own mind how to make the best of their qualities: but it was a thought which made her shiver. She had made up her mind that intercourse with her old home was a thing to be gradually dropped altogether. Heaven be praised there were no sisters. Had there been sisters they would not have been so easily shaken off, they would probably have insisted upon sharing Tisch’s good luck, and getting “their chance” also through her means. “Tisch!” think only of hearing that name again ringing through the house in the stentorian voice of one of the boys! If there were no more than this to be avoided it would be enough. Letitia put her hands up to her ears as if to shut out the horrible sound. No, fortunately, nobody here, nobody in her new world had ever heard that dreadful name: the Sillingers, indeed--but they were people who knew better than to perpetuate such an injury. And on the whole Letitia thought it advisable to drop them also. They were so far off. The north of Yorkshire is a long way from Berks. It is much further off than either place is, for instance, from London. Mrs. John Parke lamented in her new neighborhood that she was so far off from the old; but on the whole it was a dispensation of Providence with which she was well pleased.