When Mary was between twelve and thirteen a great change came in her life. Her father was presented to the vicarage of Kidderminster in Staffordshire, where the carpets are made. It was then a very rich living. It was settled that they should go to Kidderminster to live, while a curate was to do duty at Stanford and occupy the rectory. In those days clergymen often held two or even three livings at once in different parts of the country, taking the stipends themselves, and putting a curate in charge of whichever parishes they did not choose to reside in.
Mary was pleased at the idea of a change, as children generally are; and so was her father, who loved society and the noise and bustle of a town. But to poor Mrs. Butt, who was a very shy, timid, retiring person, the idea of exchanging "the glorious groves of Stanford for a residence in a town, where nothing is seen but dusty houses and dyed worsted hanging to dry on huge frames in every open space," was terrible. Mary could well remember how, during that summer, her mother walked in the woods, crying bitterly and fretting over the coming change till her health suffered.
Life in the big manufacturing town was much less wild and free than it had been in the Worcestershire parsonage; but the two little girls managed to be very happy in their own way. For one thing, they had a bedroom looking into the street, and a street was a new thing to them, and they spent every idle moment in staring out of the windows. They had a cupboard in which they kept their treasures--a dolls' house which they had brought from Stanford, and all the books they had hoarded up from childhood; "these, with two white cats, which we had also brought from Stanford, happily afforded us much amusement." Mary's rage for dolls was, moreover, at its height, though she more than ever took pains to hide her darlings, under her pinafore, from the eyes of Kidderminster.
Most of all, however, they amused themselves, when alone, by talking together in characters, keeping to the same year after year, till at length the play was played out. "We were both queens," Mary tells us, "and we were sisters, and were supposed to live near each other, and we pretended we had a great many children. In our narratives we allowed the introduction of fairies, and I used to tell long stories of things and places and adventures which I feigned I had met with in this my character of queen. The moment we two set out to walk, we always began to converse in these characters. My sister used generally to begin with, 'Well, sister, how do you do to-day? How are the children? Where have you been?' and before we were a yard from the house we were deep in talk. Oh, what wonderful tales was I wont to tell of things which I pretended I had seen, and how many, many happy hours have I and my sister spent in this way, I being the chief speaker."