of Harry and Lucy, she was nervous about grappling with higher work, deprived of the guide who had been her life-long stay. For years she had rejected all suggestions to turn her attention once more to novel-writing, and, but for the encouragement of her sister Harriet (Mrs. Butler), Helen would probably never have seen the light. It was first seriously thought of in 1830, but proceeded slowly. Life brought more interruptions to her than it had done in youth—family events, visits of kindness and pleasure, absorbed much time. Then, too, she was greatly engrossed by her agency business, to which all else was made to defer. She was punctual, we are told, not only to the day, but to the hour, of her payments; and her exertions to have the rents paid, and the money ready for these payments, were unvarying. She herself looked after the repairs, the letting of the village houses, the drains, gutters and pathways, the employment of the poor,—in short, all the hundred and one duties that devolve upon the steward of landed property. It was considered by her family that all this exertion was in no wise too much for her, that, on the contrary, it was good for her health, inducing her to walk out and take more exercise than she would have done without an object in view. Even the very drudgery of accounts, and letters of business, says her step-mother, "though at times almost too much for her bodily strength, invigorated her mind; and she went from the rent-book to her little desk and the manuscript of Helen with renewed vigour. She never wrote fiction with more life and spirit than when she had been for some time completely occupied with the hard realities of life."
Nevertheless, Helen progressed slowly, and was
