Mrs.Dale was still a very pretty woman, as Mrs.Hazeldean was still a very fine woman.

Mrs.Dale painted in water-colours, and sang, and made card-racks and penholders, and was called an "elegant, accomplished woman;" Mrs.Hazeldean cast up the squire's accounts, wrote the best part of his letters, kept a large establishment in excellent order, and was called "a clever, sensible woman." Mrs.Dale had headaches and nerves; Mrs.Hazeldean had neither nerves nor headaches.

Mrs.Dale said, "Harry had no real harm in her, but was certainly very masculine;" Mrs.Hazeldean said, "Carry would be a good creature but for her airs and graces." Mrs.Dale said Mrs.
Hazeldean was "just made to be a country squire's lady;" Mrs.Hazeldean said, "Mrs.Dale was the last person in the world who ought to have been a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke of Harry to a third person, said, "Dear Mrs.Hazeldean;" Harry, when she referred incidentally to Carry, said, "Poor Mrs.Dale." And now the reader knows why Mrs.
Hazeldean called Mrs.Dale "poor,"-- at least as well as I do.

For, after all, the word belonged to that class in the female vocabulary which may be called "obscure significants," resembling the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the inquirers into the Eleusinian Mysteries: the application is rather to be illustrated than the meaning to be exactly explained.
"That's really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima," said Mrs.Dale, who was embroidering the word CAROLINE on the border of a cambric pocket handkerchief; but edging a little farther off, as she added, "he'll not bite, will he ?" "Dear me, no!" said Miss Jemima; "but" (she added in a confidential whisper) "don't say he,--'t is a lady dog!" "Oh," said Mrs.Dale, edging off still farther, as if that confession of the creature's sex did not serve to allay her apprehensions,--"oh, then, you carry your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs,--that is being consistent indeed, Jemima!" MISS JEMIMA.--"I had a gentleman dog once,--a pug!--pugs are getting very scarce now.

I thought he was so fond of me--he snapped at every one else; the battles I fought for him! Well, will you believe--I had been staying with my friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham.