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98 of O, she could get masters to supply any deficiences in that respect, but, in her opinion, next to unimpeachable morality, a mild and cheerful temper, and obliging disposition were the most essential requisites.

My mother did not relish this at all, and now made many objections to my accepting the situation, in which my sister warmly supported her; but, unwilling to be baulked again, I overruled them all; and, having first obtained the consent of my father, who had, a short time previously, been apprised of these transactions, I wrote a most obliging epistle to my unknown correspondent, and, finally, the bargain was concluded.

It was decreed that, on the last day of January, I was to enter upon my new office, as governess in the family of Mr. Murray, of Horton Lodge, near O, about seventy miles from our village—a formidable distance to me, as I had never been above twenty miles from home in all the course of my twenty years sojourn on earth, and as, moreover, every individual, in that family and in the neighbourhood, was utterly unknown to myself and all my acquaintances. But this rendered it only the more piquant to me: I had now, in