happy lives, and under the circumstances"--but there Mrs. Carteret
stopped, and her guest, the wife of the vicar, knew no more of the
circumstances than did the world at large.

But when Molly was about the age of fifteen she began to display more
troublesome qualities, and a certain faculty for doing quite the wrong
thing under a perverse appearance of attempting good works. There is
nothing annoys a woman of Mrs. Carteret's stamp so much as good done in
the wrong way. She had known for so many years exactly how to do good to
the labourer, his family, and his widow, or to the vagrant passing by.
It was really very tiresome to find that Molly, while walking in one of
the lanes, had slipped off a new flannel petticoat in order to wrap up a
gypsy's baby. And it might be allowed to be trying that when believing
an old man of rather doubtful antecedents to be dying from exhaustion,
Molly had herself sought whisky from the nearest inn. She had bought a
whole bottle of whisky, though indeed, being seized with qualms, she had
poured half the contents of the bottle into a ditch before going back to
the cottage. And it was undoubtedly Mrs. Carteret's duty to protest when
she found that Molly had held a baby with diphtheria folded closely in
her arms while the mother fetched the doctor.

Can any one blame Mrs. Carteret for finding these doings a little
trying? And it showed how freakish and contradictory Molly was in all
her ways that she would never join nicely in school feasts, or harvest
homes, or anything pleasant or cheerful. Nor did she make friends even
with those she had worried over in times of sickness. She would risk
some serious infection, or meddle, with her odd notions, day after day
in a cottage; and then she would hardly nod to the convalescent boy or
girl when she met them again in the lanes.