“Now, really, Hester,” interposed Miss Jemima, “I cannot think how it is, but, for my part, I should have said that Mr Walton was constantly preaching works.  He’s always telling you to do something or other.  I know I always come out of the church with something on my mind; and I’ve got to work it off somehow before I’m comfortable.”

And here Miss Jemima got up on the chair again, and began to flirt with the cockatoo once more, but only in silent signs.

I cannot quite recall how this part of the conversation drew to a close.  But I will tell a fact or two about the sisters which may possibly explain how it was that they took up such different notions of my preaching.  The elder scarce left the house, but spent almost the whole of her time in reading small dingy books of eighteenth century literature.  She believed in no other; thought Shakespeare sentimental where he was not low, and Bacon pompous; Addison thoroughly respectable and gentlemanly.  Pope was the great English poet, incomparably before Milton.  The “Essay on Man” contained the deepest wisdom; the “Rape of the Lock” the most graceful imagination to be found in the language.  The “Vicar of Wakefield” was pretty, but foolish; while in philosophy, Paley was perfect, especially in his notion of happiness, which she had heard objected to, and therefore warmly defended.  Somehow or other, respectability—­in position, in morals, in religion, in conduct—­was everything.  The consequence was that her very nature was old-fashioned, and had nothing in it of that lasting youth which is the birthright—­so often despised—­of every immortal being.  But I have already said more about her than her place in my story justifies.

Miss Crowther, on the contrary, whose eccentricities did not lie on the side of respectability, had gone on shocking the stiff proprieties of her younger sister till she could be shocked no more, and gave in as to the hopelessness of fate.  She had had a severe disappointment in youth, had not only survived it, but saved her heart alive out of it, losing only, as far as appeared to the eyes of her neighbours at least, any remnant of selfish care about herself; and she now spent the love which had before been concentrated upon one object, upon every living thing that came near her, even to her sister’s sole favourite, the wheezing poodle.  She was very odd, it must be confessed, with her gray hair, her clear gray eye with wrinkled eyelids, her light step, her laugh at once girlish and cracked; darting in and out of the cottages, scolding this matron with a lurking smile in every tone, hugging that baby, boxing the ears of the other little tyrant, passing this one’s rent, and threatening that other with awful vengeances, but it was a very lovely oddity.  Their property was not large, and she knew every living thing on the place down to the dogs and pigs.  And Miss Jemima, as the people always called her, transferring the miss Crowther of primogeniture to the younger, who kept, like King Henry IV.,—­