and small stockings lying unmended on the table.
She was a lovely woman--Mrs. Amos Barton, a large, fair, gentle
Madonna, with thick, close, chestnut curls beside her well-rounded
cheeks, and with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing lines of
her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed
black silk seemed to repose on her bust and limbs with a placid
elegance and sense of distinction, in strong contrast with the uneasy
sense of being no fit, that seemed to express itself in the rustling of Mrs.
Farquhar's gros de Naples. The caps she wore would have been
pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous--for in those
days even fashionable caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her
long arched neck, and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon
with her chestnut curls, they seemed miracles of successful millinery.
Among strangers she was shy and tremulous as a girl of fifteen; she
blushed crimson if any one appealed to her opinion; yet that tall,
graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its mildness, that men
spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity.
Soothing, unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood! which supersedes
all acquisitions, all accomplishments. You would never have asked, at
any period of Mrs. Amos Barton's life, if she sketched or played the
piano. You would even perhaps have been rather scandalized if she had
descended from the serene dignity of being to the assiduous unrest of
doing. Happy the man, you would have thought, whose eye will rest on
her in the pauses of his fireside reading--whose hot aching forehead
will be soothed by the contact of her cool soft hand who will recover
himself from dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving light of
her unreproaching eyes! You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that
this bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos
Barton, whom you have already surmised not to have the refined
sensibilities for which you might have imagined Mrs. Barton's qualities
to be destined by pre-established harmony. But I, for one, do not
grudge Amos Barton this sweet wife. I have all my life had a sympathy
for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I would rather
surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the
condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his
cushion by my lady's chair. That, to be sure, is not the way of the world:
if it happens to see a fellow of fine proportions and aristocratic mien,
who makes no faux pas, and wins golden opinions from all sorts of men,
it straightway picks out for him the loveliest of unmarried women, and
says, There would be a proper match! Not at all, say I: let that
successful, well-shapen, discreet and able gentleman put up with
something less than the best in the matrimonial department; and let the
sweet woman go to make sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil
whose legs are not models, whose efforts are often blunders, and who
in general gets more kicks than halfpence. She--the sweet woman--will
like it as well; for her sublime capacity of loving will have all the more
scope; and I venture to say, Mrs. Barton's nature would never have
grown half so angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps
have had in your eye for her--a man with sufficient income and
abundant personal eclat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband,
and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.
But now he has shut the door behind him, and said, 'Well, Milly!'
'Well, dear!' was the corresponding greeting, made eloquent by a smile.
'So that young rascal won't go to sleep! Can't you give him to Nanny?'
'Why, Nanny has been busy ironing this evening; but I think I'll take
him to her now.' And Mrs. Barton glided towards the kitchen, while her
husband ran up-stairs to put on his maize-coloured dressing-gown, in
which costume he was quietly filling his long pipe when his wife
returned to the sitting-room. Maize is a colour that decidedly did not
suit his complexion, and it is one that soon soils; why, then, did Mr.
Barton select it for domestic wear? Perhaps because he had a knack of
hitting on the wrong thing in garb as well as in grammar.
Mrs. Barton now lighted her candle, and seated herself before her heap
of stockings. She had something disagreeable to tell her husband, but
she would not enter on it at once. 'Have you had a nice evening, dear?'
'Yes, pretty well. Ely was there to dinner, but went away rather early.
Miss Arabella is setting her cap at him with a vengeance. But I

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