"Every day her kind nephew came to see her, and now and then she returned his visit; but she was getting very infirm, though she had lost neither sight nor hearing, could read and work as in her younger days, and having got over the first shock of losing Betty, and the fatigue of the change, her faith in God's love was making her as happy as she had been before; she liked the people also who kept the house, and made herself very pleasant to them. Though she went to Pangbourne in the autumn, she did not, until the month of April, find the pleasure of sitting in the bow-window.
"It was then that she first noticed two little girls passing and returning every day at certain hours to and from the village.
"They were so near of a size that she thought they must be twins. They were very fair, and very pretty, and very neat. They wore light green stuff frocks, with lawn aprons and tippets, and little tight neat silk bonnets of the colour of their frocks. They both always carried a sort of satchel, as if they were going and coming from school; and there was often with them, when they went to the village, either a man or woman servant, such as might be supposed to belong to a farmhouse. They often, however, passed by the window in the evening without a servant, and sometimes were met by a servant near the house. These little ones could not, from their appearance, have been more than seven years of age.
"As Mrs. Howard watched them from day to day, she thought them the pleasantest little people she had seen for a long time; and all her ancient love for children, which age and weakness had almost made her fancy was nipped and blighted, began to spring up again and blossom as flowers in May. She wished to get acquainted with these fair ones, but she took her own way to do so.
"She began one morning, when her window was open, by giving them a kind smile as they were walking gravely by, with a man in a smock-frock behind them. On seeing this smile they both stopped short and dropped formal curtseys.
"From that time, for a week or more, these smiles and these curtseys passed between the old lady and the twins twice every day regularly. Before the end of the week the children had left off looking grave at the lady, and gave smile for smile. You may be sure that Mrs. Howard, though she had not poor Betty and Crop to send on her errands, did manage to get some pretty toys ready to give these little girls whenever the time should come when she should think it right to make herself better acquainted with them; but she thought that she would observe their ways first, and in doing so she saw several things which pleased her. Once she saw them give a poor beggar some of what had been put in their satchels for their dinners; and she saw them another time pick up something which a very old man had dropped, and give it him as politely as they would have done to my lord judge, though it was only a potato which he had dropped from a basket. Seeing this it reminded her of the old man and his bundle of sticks, and of the ill-behaviour of Master Bennet; and then all those old days came fresh to her mind. Mrs. Howard had sent to a friend in London to get the toys--two dolls exactly alike, and the histories of Miss Jemima Meek and Peter Pippin were the things she sent for; and they had not arrived a week when Mrs. Howard found a use for them. It was the beginning of July, and a very hot close day; Mrs. Howard sat at her window, and saw the little ones go as usual towards the village; it was Saturday, and she knew that they would be back again about one, for it was a half-holiday. The heat became greater and greater towards noon; there was not a breath of air, and the sun was hidden by a red glaring mist.