But the recollections of four or five years old are of a very fragmentary character.
Owing to some illness of the digestive organs, Mr.Bronte was obliged to be very careful about his diet; and, in order to avoid temptation, and possibly to have the quiet necessary for digestion, he had begun, before his wife's death, to take his dinner alone--a habit which he always retained.

He did not require companionship, therefore he did not seek it, either in his walks, or in his daily life.

The quiet regularity of his domestic hours was only broken in upon by church-wardens, and visitors on parochial business; and sometimes by a neighbouring clergyman, who came down the hills, across the moors, to mount up again to Haworth Parsonage, and spend an evening there.

But, owing to Mrs.
Bronte's death so soon after her husband had removed into the district, and also to the distances, and the bleak country to be traversed, the wives of these clerical friends did not accompany their husbands; and the daughters grew up out of childhood into girlhood bereft, in a singular manner, of all such society as would have been natural to their age, sex, and station.
But the children did not want society.

To small infantine gaieties they were unaccustomed.