Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the principal person to be considered. She never intentionally wounded them, or hurt their self-love, or demanded unconscionably of them; she was merely heedless, disregardful, unnoting of themselves, their feelings, their condition of mind or body. She would neither have mortified, nor have over- fatigued servants willingly, by any undue or excessive service required of them; but she often thoughtlessly risked doing both, by the implicit way in which fealty was tendered on their part, and accepted on hers. , t CHAPTER IV. The park and demesnes of Heathcote Hall were not extensive, but were very beautiful. The ground was broken and varied ; there were oak and beech coppices, where the birds sang and built undisturbed; hawthorn brakes, iu which trout-streams sparkled; and fern covers, amid which pheasants lurked, and where rabbits might be seen popping forth from their burrows at eventide, or scampering and bundling back to them on the least sound of approach. It was a favourite recreation of little Kate Ireton's, to make her nurse take her out in the park, that they might wander the live-long day among its most leafy nooks, and explore its deepest embowered recesses. When the child first learned to use its feet, Matty would try and induce her to walk upon the soft greensward, by her side. But the little one soon discovered that walking was more tiring than being borne in Matty's arms; accordingly at every ten paces she would stop, saying,—" I want to be carried ; take me up, nursey! " If nursey just suggested that " walking was so pretty,—and that Katey had better walk on a little way," Katey would retort " that walking was ugly,—that she didn't like walking,—and that she wouldn't walk;" whereupon Matty might perhaps go so far as to hint that she had a bone in her arm, t...