CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ENDERBYS Some twenty years before the date we have reached, the Rev.Paul Enderby, a handsome young man, endowed with moral and intellectual qualities considerably above the average, lived and worked in a certain small town of Yorkshire.
He had been here for two years, an unmarried man; now it was made known that this state of things was to come to an end; moreover, to the disappointment of not a few households, it was understood that the future Mrs.Enderby had been chosen from among his own people, in London.

The lady came, and there was a field-day of criticism.

Mrs.
Enderby looked very young, and was undeniably pretty; she had accomplishments, and evidently liked to exhibit them before her homely visitors.

She exaggerated the refinement of her utterance that it might all the more strike off against the local accent.

It soon became clear that she would be anything but an assistance to her husband in his parochial work; one or two attempts were made, apparently with good will, at intercourse with the poor parishioners, but the enterprise was distinctly a failure; it had to be definitively given up.