and the troubles of a life which had known no smiles, is perhaps not to
be alleged as much to her honour. She had joined herself to him for
better or worse, and it was her manifest duty to bear such things; wives
always have to bear them, knowing when they marry that they must take
their chance. Mr Crawley might have been a bishop, and Mrs Crawley, when
she married him, perhaps thought it probable that such would be his
fortune. Instead of that he was now, just as he was approaching his
fiftieth year, a perpetual curate, with an income of one hundred and
thirty pounds per annum--and a family. That had been Mrs Crawley's luck
in life, and of course she bore it. But she had also done much more than
this. She had striven hard to be contented, or, rather, to appear to be
contented, when he had been most wretched and most moody. She had
struggled to conceal from him her own conviction to his half-insanity,
treating him at the same time with the respect due to an honoured father
of a family, and with the careful measured indulgence fit for a sick and
wayward child. In all the terrible troubles of their life her courage
had been higher than his. The metal of which she was made had been
tempered to a steel which was very rare and fine, but the rareness and
fineness of which he had failed to appreciate. He had often told her
that she was without pride, because she was stooped to receive from
others on his behalf and on behalf of their children, things which were
needful, but which she could not buy. He had told her that she was a
beggar, and that it was better to starve than to beg. She had borne the
rebuke without a word in reply, and had then begged again for him, and
had endured the starvation herself. Nothing in their poverty had, for
years past, been a shame to her; but every accident of their poverty was
still, and ever had been, a living disgrace to him.

They had had many children, and three were still alive. Of the eldest,
Grace Crawley, we shall hear much in the coming story. She was at this