"What is wrong?" asked Fanny, alarmed.

"Do you remember our axiom? Build your church, and the rest will
take care of itself. You remember our scraping and begging, and how
that good Mr. Davison helped us out and brought the endowment up to
the needful point for consecration, on condition the incumbency was
given to him. He held it just a year, and was rich, and could help
out his bad health with a curate. But first he went to Madeira, and
then he died, and there we are, a perpetual curacy of £70 a year, no
resident gentry but ourselves, a fluctuating population mostly sick,
our poor demoralized by them, and either crazed by dissent, or
heathenized by their former distance from church. Who would take us?
No more Mr. Davisons! There was no more novelty, and too much
smartness to invite self-devotion. So we were driven from pillar to
post till we settled down into this Mr. Touchett, as good a being as
ever lived, working as hard as any two, and sparing neither himself
nor any one else."

Fanny looked up prepared to admire.

"But he has two misfortunes. He was not born a gentleman, and his
mind does not measure an inch across."

"Rachel, my dear, it is not fair to prejudice Fanny; I am sure the
poor man is very well-behaved."

"Mother! would you be calling the ideal Anglican priest, poor man?"

"I thought he was quite gentlemanlike," added Fanny.