Page:Gissing - Workers in the Dawn, vol. I, 1880.djvu/39

infinitely more so had he now become. The movement for a fresh attack upon his sensibilities took first of all the ominous form of sympathy for bis child, poor little Helen. What a shocking thing it was that the little darling—such an absolute little angel—had no mother to care for it. How was it possible that it should be sufficiently tended by the hired nurse-girl, even though overseered by the rector’s housekeeper. Mrs. Cope, a worthy old lady who had watched Edward Norman’s own cradle, and, shortly after his wife’s death, had gladly complied with his written request that she would undertake the guidance of his household? Of course, such a state of affairs was absolutely contrary to the nature of things—it might even be said to the divine law; for it should be noted that these ladies, who had once been shocked at the clergyman’s astronomical studies, were anything but backward in interpreting the thoughts and the wishes of Providence when it suited them to do so. But then arose the question among the more serious as to whether a clergyman could, consistently with his sacred office, take unto himself a second fleshly comforter. The younger maidens firmly maintained that there was nothing shocking in such a course, and to such an extent did their views preponderate that when, by chance, an inoffensive damsel of sixty summers, whose turn it was