The sudden death of Dr. Adams had postponed the intended wedding of Charles Adams’s eldest daughter; and although her mother agreed that it was their duty to forward the orphan children, she certainly felt, as most affectionate mothers whose hearts are not very much enlarged would feel, that much of their own savings—­much of the produce of her husband’s hard labour—­labour during a series of years when her sister-in-law and her children were enjoying all the luxuries of life—­would now be expended for their support; this to an all-sacrificing mother, despite her sense of the duty of kindness, was hard to bear.  As long as they were not on the spot, she theorised continually, and derived much satisfaction from the sympathising observations of her neighbours, and was proud, very proud, of the praise bestowed upon her husband’s benevolence; but when her sister-in-law’s expensive habits were in daily array before her (the cottage being close to the Grange,) when she knew, to use her own expression, “that she never put her hand to a single thing;” that she could not live without port wine, when she herself never drank even gooseberry, except on Sundays; never ironed a collar, never dusted the chimney-piece, or ate a shoulder of mutton—­roast one day, cold the next, and hashed the third.  While each day brought some fresh illustration of her thoughtlessness to the eyes of the wife of the wealthy tiller of the soil, the widow of the physician thought herself in the daily practice of the most rigid self-denial.  “I am sure,” was her constant observation to her all-patient daughter—­“I am sure I never thought it would come to this.  I had not an idea of going through so much.  I wonder your uncle and his wife can permit me to live in the way I do—­they ought to consider how I was brought up.”  It was in vain Mary represented that they were existing upon charity; that they ought to be most grateful for what they received, coming as it did from those who, in their days of prosperity, professed nothing, while those who professed all things had done nothing.  Mary would so reason, and then retire to her own chamber to weep alone over things more hard to bear.

It is painful to observe what bitterness will creep into the heart and manner of really kind girls where a lover is in the case, or even where a common-place dangling sort of flirtation is going forward; this depreciating ill nature, one of the other, is not confined by any means to the fair sex.  Young men pick each other to pieces with even more fierceness, but less ingenuity; they deal in a cut-and-hack sort of sarcasm, and do not hesitate to use terms and insinuations of the harshest kind, when a lady is in the case.  Mary (to distinguish her from her high-bred cousin, she was generally called Mary Charles) was certainly disappointed when her wedding was postponed in consequence of her uncle’s death; but a much more painful feeling followed, when she saw the admiration her