IT may be doubted whether, under these circumstances, Mrs. Crook was truly "comfortable." Probably many poorer people, on whom she would have looked down—if she had condescended to look at them at all—would not have cared to change places with her.
Mrs. Crook tried to think that she was very wise and prudent in thus caring for her own interests, and did not believe it possible that she could be mistaken. Yet there were times during the lonely hours—of which, by her own choice, she had so many—when a voice would seem to whisper, "Is your life the happiest you can possibly lead in this world? Has Time nothing better to give? Days and years are passing. Death must come to you as to others. What about eternity?"
When this last question recurred, Mrs. Crook tried to put it out of her mind. It was the one she disliked more than all the rest, yet it was the one which would repeat itself again and again, and for which she had no answer ready. She found her greatest comfort in thinking that she belonged to a very long-lived family.
Her grandmother had died at eighty-three; her mother at eighty-seven; and some of her relatives had attained still greater ages. Why not she?
"Let me see," said Mrs. Crook, when one day this unpleasant question had persisted in obtruding itself upon her loneliness: "I am just fifty-eight, and I feel as strong as ever I did in my life. I cannot remember having had a week's serious illness in all those years. I am a far stronger woman than mother was, and she lived to be nine-and-twenty years older than I am now. There is no reason why I should not reach ninety, or even a hundred. But if it were, say, eighty, which is not a great age in my family, I have two-and-twenty years to look forward to."
These calculations brought a look of satisfaction to Mrs. Crook's face. Twenty-two years is a long time to look forward to, and she thought she was very reasonable indeed not to have settled on twenty-five or thirty, with the example of her kinsfolk before her.
Then Mrs. Crook was somehow led to consider her mode of life. She had always been satisfied with it, so far. No one could say she was not religious. She always attended church when the weather was dry and not too cold. She could not risk her health by going out in the rain, or when an east wind was blowing. She would have regarded such doings as a tempting of Providence.
The collector never had to call twice for her pew rent. In fact she prided herself a good deal on the amount she thus contributed towards the maintenance of public worship, seeing that she paid for three seats and only occupied one.
Mrs. Crook liked to have a little pew to herself. It looked genteel, and she was not inclined to sit beside "nobody knows who," even at church.
He would have been a bold apparitor who had shown a stranger into one of the unoccupied seats, for Mrs. Crook, having paid for them, considered she had a right to keep them empty if she chose. She never considered how the minister would feel if everyone did the same, and expected him to preach to nearly empty pews.