Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/116

104 room in my letter to Mrs.—— to tell her a true story recently transacted in London. A lady gave a very great children's ball; at the upper end of the room, in an elevated place, was dressed out a figure to represent me with a large rod in my hand, prepared to punish such naughty doings."

The winter at Bath was saddened by the death of good Bishop Horne of Norwich, not many doors from the home of the Misses More, and likewise of a young cousin of Mrs. Wilberforce. In both cases Hannah and her sisters gave their whole hearts to sympathy with the mourners.

Hannah and Patty went to London in April, partly in the hope to recover a poor little heiress, who at fourteen had been decoyed away from home, and going in search of her with Bow Street officers—all in vain, for the child had been betrayed into a marriage and carried to the Continent; and again, in London, doing all in their power to rescue a poor creature who had tried to drown herself from weariness of a sinful course—again, alas! in vain.

The two sisters had a pleasant visit at Fulham Place, where Bishop Porteous was now installed. He took Hannah to see George III. open Parliament, and she was struck by seeing among the lady spectators, close to the foot of the throne, the Countess of Albany, once wife of Prince Charles Edward; whose birthday, the 10th of June, strangely enough, it was.