followed: this bow was of a character to ensure silence for the next five
minutes, and it did. Mrs. Sykes then inquired after Mr. Helstone, and whether he
had had any return of rheumatism, and whether preaching twice on a Sunday
fatigued him, and if he was capable of taking a full service now; and on being
assured he was, she and all her daughters, combining in chorus, expressed their
opinion that he was »a wonderful man of his years.«
    Pause second.
    Miss Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked whether Caroline had
attended the Bible Society Meeting which had been held at Nunnely last Thursday
night: the negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to utter - for last
Thursday evening she had been sitting at home, reading a novel which Robert had
lent her - elicited a simultaneous expression of surprise from the lips of the
four ladies.
    »We were all there,« said Miss Mary; »mamma and all of us; we even persuaded
papa to go: Hannah would insist upon it; but he fell asleep while Mr.
Langweilig, the German Moravian minister, was speaking: I felt quite ashamed, he
nodded so.«
    »And there was Dr Broadbent,« cried Hannah, »such a beautiful speaker! You
couldn't expect it of him, for he is almost a vulgar-looking man.«
    »But such a dear man,« interrupted Mary.
    »And such a good man, such a useful man,« added her mother.
    »Only like a butcher in appearance,« interposed the fair, proud Harriet. »I
couldn't bear to look at him: I listened with my eyes shut.«
    Miss Helstone felt her ignorance and incompetency; not having seen Dr
Broadbent, she could not give her opinion. Pause third came on. During its
continuance, Caroline was feeling at her heart's core what a dreaming fool she
was; what an unpractical life she led; how little fitness there was in her for
ordinary intercourse with the ordinary world. She was feeling how exclusively
she had attached herself to the white cottage in the Hollow; how in the
existence of one inmate of that cottage she had pent all her universe: she was
sensible that this would not do, and that some day she would be forced to make
an alteration: it could not be said that she exactly wished to resemble the
ladies before her, but she wished to become superior to her present self, so as
to feel less scared by their dignity.
    The sole means she found of reviving the flagging