It was here, or in some kindred spot, that Molly got through most of her reading--here that she read Shakespeare, Byron, and Shelley, and Wordsworth--dwelling lingeringly and lovingly upon every line in which that good old man spoke of her native land.

Sometimes she climbed to higher ground, and felt herself ever so much nearer heaven upon the crest of Silver Howe, or upon the rugged stony steep of Dolly Waggon pike, half way up the dark brow of Helvellyn; sometimes she disappeared for hours, and climbed to the summit of the hill, and wandered in perilous pathways on Striding Edge, or by the dark still water of the Red Tarn.

This had been her life ever since she had been old enough to have an independent existence; and the hills and the lakes, and the books of her own choosing, had done a great deal more in ripening her mind than Fraeulein Mueller and that admirable series of educational works which has been provided for the tuition of modern youth.

Grammars and geographies, primers and elementary works of all kinds, were Mary's detestation; but she loved books that touched her heart and filled her mind with thoughts wide and deep enough to reach into the infinite of time and space, the mystery of mind and matter, life and death.
Nothing occurred to break the placid monotony of life at Fellside for three long days after that rainy morning; and then came an event which, although commonplace enough in itself, marked the beginning of a new era in the existence of Lady Maulevrier's granddaughters.
It was evening, and the two girls were dawdling about on the sloping lawn before the drawing-room windows, where Lady Maulevrier read the newspapers in her own particular chair by one of those broad Tudor windows, according to her infallible custom.

Remote as her life had been from the busy world, her ladyship had never allowed her knowledge of public life and the bent of modern thought to fall into arrear.