‘Happy influences’

Abstract

Elizabeth was growing up meanwhile under happy influences. She had brothers and sisters in her home, her life was not all study, she had the best of company, that of happy children, as well as of all bright and natural things. She was fond of riding, she loved her gardens, her woodland playground. As she grew older she used to drive a pony and go further afield. A child of those days flying in terror along one of these steep Herefordshire lanes, perhaps frightened by a cow’s horns beyond the hedge, still describes being overtaken by a young girl in a pony carriage with a pale spiritual face and a profusion of dark curls, who suddenly caught her up into safety and drove rapidly away with her.