"'Tis not the weather, John, it is that woman's arrogance, her way of preparing the minds of the neighbourhood for the catastrophe."
"Diggory Warrender, my dear, is no more thinking of marrying again than I am," said the vicar.
"The thought of marrying again, Mr. Dodd," retorted his wife severely, "is constantly occurring to the mind of every married man."
"I assure you it never occurred to mine, my dear."
"John, you're ungrateful," replied his wife, and burst into tears.
"If my thinking of marrying again, my dear, will prove my gratitude to you, I will consider the matter at once," said the vicar of King's Warren, with a dreary smile.
But Canon Drivel's daughter did not deign to answer, she merely rang for prayers. In filed the servants, the two grim housemaids and the parlour maid of portentous plainness, for Mrs. Dodd made it a rule in her austere household that the abigails should be unattractive. Mrs. Dodd opened the book—her father, the Canon's, well-known book of Family Prayers. Although it was the second Thursday in the month she turned to the portion appointed for the first Wednesday. Alas! her copy of the Canon's work opened almost mechanically at the first Wednesday in the month, for in that Wednesday's selection there was a phrase which was very dear to Mrs. Dodd; it was the following: "And if there be one among us whose heart is yet hard," &c., &c. This was Mrs. Dodd's ultima ratio, the last drop that invariably wore away any resistance on the part of the man who, to her mind, was stony-hearted. When the Reverend John Dodd heard the commencement of that prayer he trembled in his inmost soul; when his wife reached the favourite passage she dwelt on the words with unction; and as the servants filed out of the room he, who had once been "Handsome Jack Dodd," felt himself a slave.
"I had better speak to Anastatia," said Mrs. Dodd.
"Do as you please, my dear," replied the vicar, "but I don't see how she's to propose to old Warrender, all the same."
"Men don't understand these things," sententiously remarked his wife, as she gave a vicious shake to the missionary box, which was always on the sideboard. Missionary boxes are not seen so often now as they used to be, but this old-fashioned engine of torture was clung to by the vicaress. Rosy-cheeked children had received many a bright sixpence from the vicar, their faces wreathed in smiles; the smiles had faded when Cecilia Dodd had proved to them, by chapter and verse, that the proper place for the bright silver was the drab sarcophagus on the sideboard. Even the vicar's friends, at the termination of their rubber for threepenny points, dreaded the appearance of the box; they invariably contributed, the more daring among them sighing as they did so.