"What can there be in common between Theobald and his parishioners?" said
Christina to me, in the course of the evening, when her husband was for a
few moments absent. "Of course one must not complain, but I assure you
it grieves me to see a man of Theobald's ability thrown away upon such a
place as this. If we had only been at Gaysbury, where there are the A's,
the B's, the C's, and Lord D's place, as you know, quite close, I should
not then have felt that we were living in such a desert; but I suppose it
is for the best," she added more cheerfully; "and then of course the
Bishop will come to us whenever he is in the neighbourhood, and if we
were at Gaysbury he might have gone to Lord D's."
Perhaps I have now said enough to indicate the kind of place in which
Theobald's lines were cast, and the sort of woman he had married. As for
his own habits, I see him trudging through muddy lanes and over long
sweeps of plover-haunted pastures to visit a dying cottager's wife. He
takes her meat and wine from his own table, and that not a little only
but liberally. According to his lights also, he administers what he is
pleased to call spiritual consolation.
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