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44 CHAPTER III.

1786–1788.

was little pleasure for Mary in her homecoming. The school, whose difficulties had begun before her departure, had prospered still less under Mrs. Bishop's care. Many of the pupils had been taken away. Eliza, her quick temper and excitability aggravated at that time by her late misfortunes, was not a fitting person to have the control of children. She had thoughtlessly quarrelled with their most profitable boarder, the mother of the three boys, who had in consequence given up her rooms. As yet no one else had been found to occupy them. The rent of the house was so high that these losses left the sisters without the means to pay it. They were therefore in debt, and that deeply, for people with no immediate, or even remote, prospects of an addition to their income. Then the Bloods during Mary's absence had fallen further into the Slough of Despond, out of which, now their daughter was dead, there was no one to help them. George could not aid them, because, though they did