'There's my sister. You've heard of Mary haven't you?'

Then Clara remembered that there was a Miss Belton, a poor sickly
creature, with a twisted spine and a hump back, as to whose welfare she
ought to have made inquiries.

'Oh yes; of course,' said Clara. 'I hope she's better than she used to
be when we heard of her.'

'She'll never be better. But then she does not become much worse. I
think she does grow a little weaker. She's older than I am, you know
two years older; but you would think she was quite an old woman to look
at her.' Then, for the next half-hour, they talked about Mary Belton as
they visited every corner of the place. Belton still had an eye to
business as he went on talking, and Clara remarked how many sticks he
moved as he went, how many stones he kicked on one side, and how
invariably he noted any defect in the fences. But still he talked of
his sister, swearing that she was as good as gold, and at last wiping
away the tears from his eyes as he described her maladies. 'And yet I
believe she is better off than any of us,' he said, 'because she is so
good.' Clara began to wish that she had called him Will from the
beginning, because she liked him so much. He was just the man to have
for a cousin a true loving cousin, stalwart, self-confident, with a
grain or two of tyranny in his composition as becomes a man in relation
to his intimate female relatives; and one, moreover, with whom she
could trust herself to be familiar without any danger of love-making!
She saw his character clearly, and told herself that she understood it
perfectly. He wag a jewel of a cousin, and she must begin to call him
Will as speedily as possible.