CHAPTER II.
BABYHOOD.
After his wife's death the Rev. Mr. Brontë's life grew yet more secluded from ordinary human interests. He was not intimate with his parishioners; scarcely more intimate with his children. He was proud of them when they said anything clever, for, in spite of their babyhood, he felt at such moments that they were worthy of their father; but their forlorn infancy, their helpless ignorance, was no appeal to his heart. Some months before his wife's death he had begun to take his dinner alone, on account of his delicate digestion; and he continued the habit, seeing the children seldom except at breakfast and tea, when he would amuse the elders by talking Tory politics with them, and entertain the baby, Emily, with his Irish tales of violence and horror. Perhaps on account of this very aloofness, he always had a great influence over the children; he did not care for any dearer relation.
His empty days were filled with occasional visits to some sick person in the village; with long walks alone over the moors, and with the composition of his 'Cottage in the Wood' and those grandiloquent sermons which still linger in the memory of Haworth. Occasionally a clergyman from one of the neighbouring villages would walk over to see him; but as Mrs. Brontë had died so soon after her arrival at Haworth their wives never
