Theobald did not lay so much
stress on this as she did, but as she settled what he should have at
dinner she could take care that he got no strangled fowls; as for
black puddings, happily, he had seen them made when he was a boy,
and had never got over his aversion for them. She wished the matter
were one of more general observance than it was; this was just a
case in which as Lady Winchester she might have been able to do what
as plain Mrs. Pontifex it was hopeless even to attempt.
And thus this worthy couple jogged on from month to month and from
year to year. The reader, if he has passed middle life and has a
clerical connection, will probably remember scores and scores of
rectors and rectors' wives who differed in no material respect from
Theobald and Christina. Speaking from a recollection and experience
extending over nearly eighty years from the time when I was myself a
child in the nursery of a vicarage, I should say I had drawn the
better rather than the worst side of the life of an English country
parson of some fifty years ago. I admit, however, that there are no
such people to be found nowadays. A more united or, on the whole,
happier, couple could not have been found in England.
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