The
next Sunday morning after he received the news, he stayed at home out
of his turn to make up any medicines which might be urgently
required, and sent his assistant to church.
As to Madge, she enjoyed her expulsion as a great joke, and her
Brighton experiences were the cause of much laughter. She had
learned a good deal while she was away from home, not precisely what
it was intended she should learn, and she came back with a strong,
insurgent tendency, which was even more noticeable when she returned
from Germany. Neither of the sisters lived at the school in Weimar,
but at the house of a lady who had been recommended to Mrs Hopgood,
and by this lady they were introduced to the great German classics.
She herself was an enthusiast for Goethe, whom she well remembered in
his old age, and Clara and Madge, each of them in turn, learned to
know the poet as they would never have known him in England. Even
the town taught them much about him, for in many ways it was
expressive of him and seemed as if it had shaped itself for him. It
was a delightful time for them. They enjoyed the society and
constant mental stimulus; they loved the beautiful park; not a
separate enclosure walled round like an English park, but suffering
the streets to end in it, and in summer time there were excursions
into the Thuringer Wald, generally to some point memorable in
history, or for some literary association.
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