She had, as a matter of course, to nurse the patient, assist the flitting, accelerate the wedding, welcome the little stranger, or console the mourners as the case might be.
We, the inhabitants of the suburb which she blessed with her presence, thought all this a gross infringement of our rights in her possession, although we welcomed the dear old lady all the more gladly when we got her back again amongst us once more.
As for confidences, I believe she had the skeleton secret of every soul in the place confided to her sacred keeping at some one time or other; and love stories! why, she must have been cram full of them--from the heart-breaking affair of poor little Polly Skittles, the laundress' pretty daughter, up to Baby Blake's last flirtation.
What her brother would have done without her, it would be impossible to tell.

She had quite as much to do with the parish as he; and, I'm sure, if little Miss Pimpernell had not kept house for him and minded all his temporal affairs, he would never have known what to eat or drink, or what to put on.
The vicar had lost his wife soon after his marriage, when he was quite a young man; but, instead of being bowed down by his affliction, as might have been the case with a good many ardent natures like his, he earnestly fought against it, buckling to his work, all the more vigorously perhaps, as one of Christ's ministers.
Everybody thenceforth was wife and child, brother and sister to him: humanity in general took the place of all family ties.
He was the purest Christian character I have ever come across, lovable, intelligent, winning and merry, too, at times, in spite of his grief-- would that all ministers were like him to uphold the old love and honour of our national Church! No orator or skilled preacher in the pulpit, he simply led you captive by his earnestness and evident thorough belief in all that he uttered; so that "those who came to scoff, remained to pray." No hard, metallic repetition by rote was his; but the plain, unvarnished story of the gospel which he felt and of whose truth he was assured, animated by a broad spirit of Protestantism that led him to extend a raising hand to every erring brother, and see religion in other creeds besides his own.
"In his duty prompt at every call, He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all; And, as a bird each fond endearment tries, To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and _led the way_!" He and his good sister were, in fact, a pair of heart-oddities, whom to know was to admire with reverential affection.

They could not have had an enemy or slanderer in the world.

Even Miss Spight had never a word to say against either; that alone spoke volumes for them.
"Oh, Frank," exclaimed little Miss Pimpernell as I entered the school- room--she always called me by my Christian name, or styled me her "boy," having known me from childhood--"Oh, Frank! Here you are at last! I am so glad to see you back again, my boy: you have just come in time to help us.

I was really afraid those nasty Frenchmen had eaten you up, you have been such a long time away!" "I dare say there's enough left of him," sneered Mr Mawley the curate.
_He_ was the direct opposite of the vicar; and a man whom I cordially detested, the feeling, I believe, being mutual.