On her first settlement in our neighbourhood, I made it my own particular business (for at that time I was not employed in writing, having published my first volume and not begun my second) to pay my _devoirs_ to her ladyship every morning at eleven.

Customs very soon became laws.

I began _The Task_, for she was the lady who gave me the _Sofa_ for a subject.

Being once engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my morning attendance.

We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten; and the intervening hour was all the time I could find in the whole day for writing, and occasionally it would happen that the half of that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose.