To eat was a pain, or at best a trouble.

Sleep would not comfort her in bed, and weariness during the day made it necessary that the hours passed in bed should be very long.

She was one of those whose lot in life drives us to marvel at the inequalities of human destiny, and to inquire curiously within ourselves whether future compensation is to be given.
It is said of those who are small and crooked-backed in their bodies, that their minds are equally cross-grained and their tempers as ungainly as their stature.

But no one had ever said this of Mary Belton.

Her friends, indeed, were very few in number; but those who knew her well loved her as they knew her, and there were three or four persons in the world who were ready at all times to swear that she was faultless.