wooden bolt and drew the blind before the diamond-paned window.




CHAPTER III


Anne Hilton was one of those women who have so little knowledge of the
practical thoughts of those round about them, that they pass their lives
half-disliked, partly respected, and mostly avoided. She had lived alone
now for two years, her father, whom she had nursed, having died of the
saddest human malady. He had ("as anyone might have had with such a
daughter," declared the neighbours), harboured a great contempt for
women, and though, being uninclined to tread the heights himself, he
feared his daughter's uprightness of character, he had never lost an
occasion of pouring scorn on her unpractical ways.

"Can you take it home for me, James?" would ask a neighbour, handing up
a case of eggs to the cart, where James sat preparing to leave the
market.

"There's no women in the cart," James would reply, and supposed he had
given the required assent.

The "round-about ways of doing things," which had been the butt of her
shrewd old father, had brought upon Anne a customary air of
half-readiness, so that going in suddenly, she might be found with her
bonnet on and her handkerchief on the table, but one perceived she was
still in her petticoat, and was making a pie for dinner. Meals, indeed,