He felt that the mysteries of a widow's garments had best not be discussed by one who dwelt, so to speak, outside them.
"Poor Mary can do nothing gradually," said Miss Crewys.

"She leapt in a single hour out of a black dress into a white one." "Her anguish when our poor Timothy succumbed to that fatal operation surpassed even the bounds of decorum," said Lady Belstone, "and yet--she would not wear a cap!" She appealed to the canon with such a pathetic expression in her small, red-rimmed, grey eyes that he could not answer lightly.
They faced him with anxious looks and drooping, tremulous mouths.
They had grown curiously alike during the close association of nearly eighty years, though in their far-off days of girlhood no one had thought them to resemble each other.
Miss Crewys crocheted a shawl with hands so delicately cared for and preserved, that they scarce showed any sign of her great age; her sister wore gloves, as was the habit of both when unoccupied, and she grasped her handkerchief in black kid fingers that trembled slightly with emotion.
The canon realized that the old ladies were seriously troubled concerning their sister-in-law's delinquencies.
"We speak to you, of course, as our _clergyman_," said Miss Crewys; and the poor gentleman could only bow sympathetically.
"I am an old friend," he said feelingly, "and your confidences are sacred.

But I think in your very natural--er--affection for Lady Mary"-- the word stuck in his throat--"you are, perhaps, over-anxious.
In judging those younger than ourselves," said the canon, gallantly coupling himself with his auditors,' though acutely conscious that he was some twenty years the junior of both, "we must not forget that they recover their spirits, by a merciful dispensation of Providence, more quickly than we should ourselves in the like circumstances," said the canon, who was as light-hearted a cleric as any in England.
"They do, indeed," said Lady Belstone, emphatically; "when they can sing and play all the day and half the night, like our dear Mary and young John." "You see the piano blocking up the hall, though Sir Timothy hated music ?" said Miss Crewys.
Her own mourning was thoughtfully graduated to indicate the time which had elapsed since Sir Timothy's decease.

She wore a violet silk of sombre hue, ornamented by a black silk apron and a black lace scarf.
The velvet bow which served so very imperfectly as a skull-cap was also violet, intimating a semi-assuaged, but respectfully lengthened, grief for the departed.
"And now this maddest scheme of all," said Miss Crewys.
"Bless me! What mad scheme ?" "A house in London is to be hired as soon as Peter comes home." "Is that all?
But surely that is very natural.

For my part, I have often wondered why none of you ever cared to go to London, if only for your shopping.