A simple person, of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith to save, and,
perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favour of her boy. There were no
entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, during the year of her weeds.
Nor, indeed, did the Doctor's silver dish-covers, of which he was so
proud, and which were flourished all over with the arms of the
Pendennises, and surmounted with their crest, come out of the
plate-chests again for long, long years. The household was diminished,
and its expenses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast when
Pen dined from home: and he himself headed the remonstrance from the
kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality of the Fairoaks beer. She was
becoming miserly for Pen. Indeed, who ever accused women of being just?
They are always sacrificing themselves or somebody for somebody else's
sake.

There happened to be no young woman in the small circle of friends who
were in the widow's intimacy whom Pendennis could by any possibility
gratify by endowing her with the inestimable treasure of a heart which he
was longing to give away. Some young fellows in this predicament bestow
their young affections upon Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the eyes of
tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith's daughter. Pen thought a Pendennis
much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He was too high-minded for a
vulgar intrigue, and, at the idea of an intrigue or a seduction, had he
ever entertained it, his heart would have revolted as from the notion of
any act of baseness or dishonour. Miss Minny Portman was too old, too
large, and too fond of reading 'Rollin's Ancient History.' The Miss
Boardbacks, Admiral Boardback's daughters (of St. Vincent's, or Fourth of
June House, as it was called), disgusted Pen with the London airs which
they brought into the country, from Gloucester Place, where they passed
the season, and looked down upon Pen as a chit. Captain Glanders's (H.P.,
50th Dragoon Guards) three girls were in brown-holland pinafores as yet,