everything else, she was subdued, gentle, obedient, but slow and
obtuse.

Yet, little as he knew it, Mr. Touchett might have even asserted his
authority in a still more trying manner. If the gentle little widow
had not cast a halo round her relatives, he could have preached that
sermon upon the home-keeping duties of women, or have been too much
offended to accept any service from the Curtis family; and he could
have done without them, for he had a wide middle-class popularity;
his manners with the second-rate society, in which he had been bred,
were just sufficiently superior and flattering to recommend all his
best points, and he obtained plenty of subscriptions from visitors,
and of co-operation from inhabitants. Many a young lady was in a
flutter at the approach of the spruce little figure in black, and
so many volunteers were there for parish work, that districts and
classes were divided and subdivided, till it sometimes seemed as if
the only difficulty was to find poor people enough who would submit
to serve as the corpus vile for their charitable treatment.

For it was not a really poor population. The men were seafaring, the
women lacemaking, and just well enough off to make dissent doubly
attractive as an escape from some of the interfering almsgiving of
the place. Over-visiting, criticism of dress, and inquisitorial
examinations had made more than one Primitive Methodist, and no
severe distress had been so recent as to render the women tolerant of
troublesome weekly inspections. The Curtis sisters were, however,
regarded as an exception; they were viewed as real gentlefolks, not
only by their own tenants, but by all who were conscious of their
hereditary claims to respect; they did not care whether hair were
long or short, and their benefits were more substantial and reliable