An Open Verdict: A Novel, Volume 1 (of 3)

The Vicar spoke with some soreness. Poor Mrs. Dulcimer’s good-nature, and sometimes misdirected energy, had been getting her into trouble for the last twenty years. Everybody liked her; everybody dreaded and abhorred her good-nature. She had no children of her own, and was always full of good advice for the mothers of her acquaintance. She knew when babies ought to be weaned, and when they were sickening for the measles. She tried to heal family quarrels, and invariably made the breach wider. She loved match-making, but her matches, when brought to the triumphant conclusion of licence or wedding cake, seldom stood the test of a few years’ matrimony. She was so eager to do the best for the young men and women of her acquaintance, that she generally brought ill-assorted people together, taking too broad a view of the fitness of things, on the ground of income, family, age, and such vulgar qualifications, and ignoring those subtle differences which set an eternal mark of separation upon certain members of the human family.