time nineteen years old, and there were those who said, that in spite of
her poverty, her shabby outward apparel, and a certain thin, unfledged,
unrounded form of person, a want of fulness in the lines of her figure,
she was the prettiest girl in that part of the world. She was living now
at a school in Silverbridge, where for the last year she had been a
teacher; and there were many in Silverbridge who declared that very
bright prospects were opening to her--that young Major Grantly of Crosby
Lodge, who, though a widower with a young child, was the cynosure of all
female eyes in and around Silverbridge, had found beauty in her thin
face, and that Grace Crawley's fortune was made in the teeth, as it
were, of the prevailing ill-fortune of the family. Bob Crawley, who was
two years younger, was now at Malbro' School, from whence it was
intended that he should proceed to Cambridge, and be educated there at
the expense of his godfather Dean Arabin. In this also the world saw a
stroke of good luck. But then nothing was lucky to Mr Crawley. Bob,
indeed, who had done well at school, might do well at Cambridge--might
achieve great things there. But Mr Crawley would almost have preferred
that the boy should work in the fields, than that he should be educated
in a manner so manifestly eleemosynary. And then his clothes! How was he
to be provided with clothes fit either for school or for college? But
the dean and Mrs Crawley between them managed this, leaving Mr Crawley
very much in the dark, as Mrs Crawley was in the habit of leaving him.
Then there was a younger daughter, Jane, still at home, who passed her
life between her mother's work-table and her father's Greek, mending
linen, and learning to scan iambics--for Mr Crawley in his early days
had been a ripe scholar.

And now there had come upon them all this terribly crushing disaster.
That poor Mr Crawley had gradually got himself into a mess of debt at
Silverbridge, from which he had been quite unable to extricate himself,