Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/136

124 morally, and there were serious troubles in the Mendip world. Betsy Baker became unsatisfactory after her mother's death, and it was a relief when she married.

Then Young, the Nailsea master, who seems to have been an excellent but injudicious man, contrived to affront the farmers, so that they insisted on his removal, though they had no distinct accusation to bring against him; and when the ladies refused, they did all they could to discourage attendance at his classes, and at length he was transferred to Blagdon, where the Misses More had been warmly invited by the Rector, Dr. Crossman, and the Curate, Mr. Bere, to open a school. The damp of the place brought on spasms in Hannah's face; she fainted, and, in her fall, dashed her face against a stone wall, injuring herself severely; and was so far from recovered, when Mr. Wilberforce brought his bride to Cowslip Green, that he insisted on carrying her off to Bath for a short course of the waters, leaving, as she said, "poor Patty to work double tides." Wedmore, not far from Cheddar, was taken in hand. There the farmers lived in actual terror from the miners; but the principal landlord of Wedmore, Mr. Barrow, declared that no school was wanted, for when the people gamed or rioted in the churchyard on Sunday, he sometimes went and cursed and swore at them a little, and, as he was overseer, they then dispersed always. His wife decidedly held that "The poor in a loomp are bad." She said that