five o'clock
We returned from our little tour in time enough for prayers , with minds well prepared for them , by the view of such noble fruits of real piety . Indeed the steward who reads them does it with such extreme propriety and such humble and sincere devotion as is alone sufficient to fix the attention and warm the hearts of his hearers . After breakfast was over , we got Mrs Maynard to accompany us into the garden , she in complaisance to us abstaining while we were at the hall from her share in the daily visits the ladies pay to their several institutions , and to the poor and sick in their village . Their employments are great , but their days are proportionable ; for they are always up by five o'clock , and by their example the people in the village rise equally early ; at that hour one sees them all engaged in their several businesses with an assiduity which in other places is not awakened till much later . I called on Mrs Maynard to continue her task , which without any previous ceremony she did as follows . THE HISTORY OF Miss SELVYN Mr Selvyn , the younger brother of an ancient family , whose fortune was inferior to the rank it held in the country where it had long been fixed , was placed in trade in London ; but his success not answering his hopes , he gave it up before it was too late to secure himself a small subsistence and retired into the country when Miss Selvyn was about five years old . His wife had been dead two years ; thus his little girl 's education devolved entirely on himself .