It was grained in the nature of Sally to let the morrow take thought for the things of itself.

The other three children, the boy up at Oxford, the two girls, one older, the other younger than Sally, were different.

With them she succeeded.

Into their minds she instilled the knowledge that, of all professions, the Church takes the highest rank in the social scale, and though in the world itself they might have found that hard to believe, yet in the little town of Cailsham Mrs.Bishop had discovered her capacity for draining from her husband's parishioners a certain social deference and respect.
By persuading the Rev.Samuel to utilize his priestly influence upon the declining years of an old lady of title in the neighbourhood, Mrs.Bishop had stolen her way into the very best society which Cailsham had to offer.

And Sally was the only one of her children who did not thoroughly appreciate it.
With what deftness she had induced her husband to make his spiritual ministrations indispensable to the tottering vitality of Lady Bray; with what cunning she herself had persuaded the old woman to be present at her garden parties over the last five years, though the poor creature was nothing but the head of death and the bones of decay, barely kept together by the common support of her clothes, it would be almost impossible to imagine.