That their motives are excellent I admit; they are not a bit selfish, and they interfere with you for your own good; but they successfully accomplish as much incurable mischief in half an hour as it would take half a dozen professional mischief-makers at least a year to finish off satisfactorily.

If they can not mind their own business it doesn't follow that Providence can't either, don't you see ?" Whereupon Felicia entered the room, and the conversation was abruptly closed; but not before Mrs.Herbert had decided that if Providence had selected her daughter as the consoler of Christopher's sorrows, Providence must be gently and patiently reasoned with until another and more suitable comforter was substituted.

She did not, of course, put the matter to herself thus barely; but this was what her decision practically amounted to.
But although people might not be talking, as Mrs.Herbert imagined, about Christopher and Felicia, the tongues of Sedgehill were all agog on the subject of the evident attachment between Elisabeth Farringdon and the master of the Moat House.
"I'm afeared as our Miss Elisabeth is keeping company with that Mr.
Tremaine; I am indeed," Mrs.Bateson confided to her crony, Mrs.Hankey.
Mrs.Hankey, as was her wont, groaned both in spirit and in person.

"So I've heard tell, more's the pity! Miss Elisabeth is no favourite of mine, as you know, being so dark-complexioned as a child, and I never could abide dark babies.

I haven't much to be thankful for, I'm sure, for the Lord has tried me sore, giving me Hankey as a husband, and such a poor appetite as I never enjoy a meal from one year's end to another; but one thing I can boast of, and that is my babies were all fair, with as clear a skin as you could want to see.