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Nevertheless, the bitter contrast of the child and of the man had made him very wretched and to the widower's solitude added the father's sadness. And worst of all Maria's utter loss that dear, warm-hearted, innocent, ill-used, and yet beloved daughter. Why did he spurn her away? and keep her away so long? oh, hard heart, hard heart!
Second Selectman Batson Reeves busied himself as a sort of master of ceremonies for Professor Derolli, acted as committee of investigation when the professor's "stock subject" remained for a day and night in a shallow trench in the village cemetery, and even gave them the best that his widower's house could afford at a Sunday dinner.
"Old maids do come in handy oftentimes," subjoined Mrs. Leverett. Yet in those days every mother secretly, often openly, counted on her girls being married. The single woman had no such meed of respect paid her as the "bachelor maids" of to-day. She often went out as housekeeper in a widower's family, and took him and his children for the sake of having a home of her own.
It wouldn't been best for her to married a man most a hundred. And I knowed her soft nater made her a willin' martyr to widower's wiles. Age made no difference to Blandina. And I dassent venter to let him git nearer to her. So I bid him a hasty good-by and linked my arm into hern and led her away.
This unexpected challenge from Toby had the effect of diverting the widower's thoughts. He left the consideration of the snub he had been preparing for the loafer for some future time, and waited for the other's reply. But Sunny was roused, and stared angrily round upon the grinning face of his questioner. "Guess that ain't no affair of yours, anyway," he snorted.
The question of water supply was closed in his house; but the well remained open and kept up its illicit connection with the drain. Old Becky, keeper of the widower's keys, had followed closely the history of those unhappy "cases;" she had listened to discussions, violent or suppressed, she had heard much talk that went on behind her master's back.
The widower's one grief was that he was forced to separate himself from his life's companion for a period of, at least, a week. A pretty enough scheme, wasn't it, Polycarp? We shall shortly bury the wax effigy in Brompton Cemetery, with the assistance of Hugo's undertakers, and a parson or so, and grave-diggers, and registrars of deaths, and so on and so on.
As is frequently the case among the whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of this storm-beaten widower's life had been tossed away on distant seas, that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof. Thus the wife of his youth, though she died in his and her declining age, retained the bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory.
If ever he thought of freedom, he did so, as men think of the millennium, as of a good time which may be coming, but which nobody expects to come in their day. Mrs Proudie might be said still to bloom, and was, at any rate, strong; and the bishop had no reason to apprehend that he would be speedily visited with the sorrows of a widower's life. He is still bishop of Barchester.
However, he had only a slight recurrence of the resentment which had assailed him during the winter at every sign of his mother's interest in Morgan; though he was still ashamed of his aunt sometimes, when it seemed to him that Fanny was almost publicly throwing herself at the widower's head. Fanny and he had one or two arguments in which her fierceness again astonished and amused him.
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