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74 Bridge. Mary fulfilled her promise of being a mother to them both. She stinted herself that she might make their lot more endurable.

When Eliza went to begin her Welsh engagement at Upton Castle, she spent a night on the way with her father. Her report of this visit opened a new channel for Mary's benevolence. Mr. Wollstonecraft was then living at Laugharne, where he had taken his family many years before, and where his daughters had made several very good friends. But Eliza, as she lamented to Everina, went sadly from one old beloved haunt to another, without meeting an eye which glistened at seeing her. Old acquaintances were dead, or had sought a home elsewhere. The few who were left would not, probably because of the father's disgrace, come to see her. The step-mother, the second Mrs. Wollstonecraft, was helpful and economical; but her thrift availed little against the drunken follies of her husband. The latter had but just recovered from an illness. He was worn to a skeleton, he coughed and groaned all night in a way to make the listener's blood run cold, and he could not walk ten yards without pausing to pant for breath. His poverty was so abject that his clothes were barely decent, and his habits so low that he was indifferent to personal cleanliness. For days and weeks after she had seen him, Eliza was haunted by the memory of his unkempt hair and beard, his red face and his beggarly shabbiness. Poor unfortunate Charles, the last child left at home, was half-naked, and his time was spent in quarrelling with his father. Eliza, who knew how to be independent, was irritated by her brother's idleness. "I am very cool to Charles, and have said all I can to rouse