Pause second.
Miss Mary, getting up the steam in her turn, asked whether Caroline had attended the Bible Society meeting which had been held at Nunnely last Thursday night. The negative answer which truth compelled Caroline to utter – for last Thursday evening she had been sitting at home, reading a novel which Robert had lent her – elicited a simultaneous expression of surprise from the lips of the four ladies.
“We were all there,” said Miss Mary—“mamma and all of us. We even persuaded papa to go. Hannah would insist upon it. But he fell asleep while Mr. Langweilig, the German Moravian minister, was speaking. I felt quite ashamed, he nodded so.”
“And there was Dr. Broadbent,” cried Hannah—“such a beautiful speaker! You couldn’t expect it of him, for he is almost a vulgar-looking man.”
“But such a dear man,” interrupted Mary.
“And such a good man, such a useful man,” added her mother.
“Only like a butcher in appearance,” interposed the fair, proud Harriet. “I couldn’t bear to look at him. I listened with my eyes shut.”
Miss Helstone felt her ignorance and incompetency. Not having seen Dr. Broadbent, she could not give her opinion. Pause third came on. During its continuance, Caroline was feeling at her heart’s core what a dreaming fool she was, what an unpractical life she led, how little fitness there was in her for ordinary intercourse with the ordinary world. She was feeling how exclusively she had attached herself to the white cottage in the Hollow, how in the existence of one inmate of that cottage she had pent all her universe. She was sensible that this would not do, and that someday she would be forced to make an alteration. It could not be said that she exactly wished to resemble the ladies before her, but she wished to become superior to her present self, so as to feel less scared by their dignity.
The sole means she found of reviving the flagging discourse was by asking them if they would all stay to tea; and a cruel struggle it cost her to perform this piece of civility. Mrs. Sykes had begun, “We are much obliged to you, but…” when in came Fanny once more.
“The gentlemen will stay the evening, ma’am,” was the message she brought from Mr. Helstone.
“What gentlemen have you?” now inquired Mrs. Sykes. Their names were specified; she and her daughters interchanged glances. The curates were not to them what they were to Caroline. Mr. Sweeting was quite a favourite with them; even Mr. Malone rather so, because he was a clergyman. “Really, since you have company already, I think we will stay,” remarked Mrs. Sykes. “We shall be quite a pleasant little party. I always like to meet the clergy.”