Speaking to a friend, long after in old age, she said that in her young days ‘at home,’ when a certain nameless gentleman was supposed to be paying his addresses to Fanny, the other sisters were ‘very indignant’ at the idea of any man wishing to break into their sisterly circle. This probably preceded her own little affair, since Fanny was four years her senior. The pretty notion of home-life and of the unbroken sisterly circle had in time to yield before stern facts, as first one sister and then a second proved faithless to nursery traditions.