Accordingly Mrs. Porson called. On the first occasion when she did so Mrs. Mulready sent down to say that she was sorry she could not see her, but that the state of her health did not permit her to receive visitors. Mrs. Porson, however, was not to be discouraged. First she made friends with Lucy, and when she knew that the girl was sure to have spoken pleasantly of her to her mother she opened a correspondence with Mrs. Mulready. At first she only wrote to ask that Lucy might be allowed to come and spend the day with her. Her next letter was on the subject of Lucy's music. The girl had long gone to a day school kept by a lady in Marsden, but her music had been neglected, and Mrs. Porson wrote to say that she found that Lucy had a taste for music, and that having been herself well taught she should be happy to give her lessons twice a week, and that if Mrs. Mulready felt well enough to see her she would like to have a little chat with her on the subject. This broke the ice. Lucy's backwardness in music had long been a grievance with her mother, who, as she lay in bed and listened to the girl practicing below had fretted over the thought that she could obtain no good teacher for her in Marsden. Mrs. Porson's offer was therefore too tempting to be refused, and as it was necessary to appear to reciprocate the kindness of that lady, she determined to make an effort to receive her. The meeting went off well. Having once made the effort Mrs. Mulready found, to her surprise, that it was pleasant to her after being cut off for so many months from all intercourse with the world, except such as she gained from the doctor, her two children, and the old servant, to be chatting with her visitor, who exerted herself to the utmost to make herself agreeable. The talk was at first confined to the ostensible subject of Mrs. Porson's visit; but after that was satisfactorily arranged the conversation turned to Marsden and the neighborhood. Many people had called upon Mrs. Porson, and as all of them were more or less known to Mrs. Mulready, her visitor asked her many questions concerning them, and the invalid was soon gossiping cheerfully over the family histories and personal peculiarities of her neighbors. “You have done me a world of good,” she said when Mrs. Porson rose to leave. “I never see any one but the doctor, and he is the worst person in the world for a gossip. He ought to know everything, but somehow he seems to know nothing. You will come again, won't you? It will be a real kindness, and you have taken so much interest in my daughter that it quite seems to me as if you were an old friend.” And so the visit was repeated: but not too often, for Mrs. Porson knew that it was better that her patient should wait and long for her coming, and now that the ice was once broken, Mrs. Mulready soon came to look forward with eagerness to these changes in her monotonous existence.