“I wish you would not talk about it,” said Grace.

“I must, or Fanny will not understand the state of parties at Avonmouth.”

“Parties!  Oh, I hope not.”

“My dear child, party spirit is another word for vitality.  So you thought the church we sighed for had made the place all we sighed to see it, and ourselves too.  Oh!  Fanny is this what you have been across the world for?”

“What is wrong?” asked Fanny, alarmed.

“Do you remember our axiom?  Build your church, and the rest will take care of itself.  You remember our scraping and begging, and how that good Mr. Davison helped us out and brought the endowment up to the needful point for consecration, on condition the incumbency was given to him.  He held it just a year, and was rich, and could help out his bad health with a curate.  But first he went to Madeira, and then he died, and there we are, a perpetual curacy of £70 a year, no resident gentry but ourselves, a fluctuating population mostly sick, our poor demoralized by them, and either crazed by dissent, or heathenized by their former distance from church.  Who would take us?  No more Mr. Davisons!  There was no more novelty, and too much smartness to invite self-devotion.  So we were driven from pillar to post till we settled down into this Mr. Touchett, as good a being as ever lived, working as hard as any two, and sparing neither himself nor any one else.”

Fanny looked up prepared to admire.

“But he has two misfortunes.  He was not born a gentleman, and his mind does not measure an inch across.”

“Rachel, my dear, it is not fair to prejudice Fanny; I am sure the poor man is very well-behaved.”

“Mother! would you be calling the ideal Anglican priest, poor man?”

“I thought he was quite gentlemanlike,” added Fanny.

“Gentlemanlike! ay, that’s it,” said Rachel, “just so like as to delight the born curatolatress, like Grace and Miss Williams.”

“Would it hurt the children?” asked Fanny, hardly comprehending the tremendous term.

“Yes, if it infected you,” said Rachel, intending some playfullness.  “A mother of contracted mind forfeits the allegiance of her sons.”

“Oh, Rachel, I know I am weak and silly,” said the gentle young widow, terrified, “but the Major said if I only tried to do my duty by them I should be helped.”

“And I will help you, Fanny,” said Rachel.  “All that is requisite is good sense and firmness, and a thorough sense of responsibility.”

“That is what is so dreadful.  The responsibility of all those dear fatherless boys, and if—­if I should do wrong by them.”