But 'twas the sad ill fortune of the children Anne and Barbara to have been treated by Nature in a way but niggardly.

They were pale young misses, with insignificant faces and snub noses, resembling an aunt who died a spinster, as they themselves seemed most likely to.

Sir Jeoffry could not bear the sight of them, and they fled at the sound of his footsteps, if it so happened that by chance they heard it, huddling together in corners, and slinking behind doors or anything big enough to hide them.
They had no playthings and no companions and no pleasures but such as the innocent invention of childhood contrives for itself.
After their mother's death a youth desolate and strange indeed lay before them.

A spinster who was a poor relation was the only person of respectable breeding who ever came near them.

To save herself from genteel starvation, she had offered herself for the place of governess to them, though she was fitted for the position neither by education nor character.