270 EARLY REMINISCENCES expected that my grand-uncle would renew his suit—he did make suit, not to her but to her daughter when just out of school, and short frocks. Mrs. Leeves was furious, and would not give her consent. " Then I'll take her without it," said Captain Sabine, and he married Eliza Leeves. She was at once associated by him in his scientific studies, which specially concerned terrestrial magnetism. I have heard her tell how that when a young girl-wife she had a novel on her lap under the table, till sharply called to order by her husband. " Eliza ! do me this calculation !" or " Translate me this from the German " or " the Russian." She manifested an extraordinary capacity for learning any European language in a surprisingly short time. She was plain featured, a humble, sweet character, terribly afraid of her mother, who eventually came to live with her son-in-law and daughter, when they rented a small house at Shooter's Hill. Mrs. Leeves was a very handsome woman to her dying day, and would sit staring at her daughter by the quarter of an hour, and then exclaim after a preliminary and peculiarly aggravating sniff: " God bless me ! however could he have put up with you ? " Lady Sabine felt uncomfortable on such occasions, and infinitely preferred to be called away to extract a cube root, or to decipher a Russian letter. My father became more and more uneasy at my lingering in town, and with his not knowing what I really was about, so finally, as already said, he wrote a peremptory letter to me, through Sir Edward, who communicated it to me, ordering me without hesitation or excuse to leave S. Barnabas or wherever " the deuce I was." I told my trouble to Father Lowder, and in a few days he obtained for me an offer of a mastership in one of the Woodard schools. I went to Shoreham, but only for a week or ten days, and was thence transferred to Hurstpierpoint, where I was promised £25 per annum as assistant master, and was pretty hard worked for that payment.1 However, I remained there for eight very happy years. I took classes in elementary Latin, French, German, drawing and chemistry. Shoreham was not suited for me, as it was a school for Upper Classics. 1 Raised later to ^40.
