Phoebe, Junior by Margaret Oliphant

"Well, Ursula, how do you do? " said Mrs. Sam Hurst, meeting her young neighbour with outstretched hands. She was a portly good-looking woman with an active mind, and nothing, or next to nothing to do, and instead of being affronted as some persons might have been, she was amused, and indeed flattered, by the suspicion and alarm with which all the young Mays regarded her. Whether she had the least intention of ever giving any justification to their alarms it would be impossible to say, for indeed to a sensible woman of forty-five, well to do and comfortable, a husband with "a temper of his own," and a large poor unruly family, was, perhaps, not so tempting as he appeared to be to his jealous children. Anyhow she was not at all angry with them for being jealous and afraid of her. She was cordial in her manner to the Mays as to everybody she knew. She asked how Ursula had enjoyed herself, where she had been, what she had seen, and a hundred questions more.

"It is quite delightful to see somebody who has something to tell," she said when the interrogation was over. "I ask everybody what news, and no one has any news, which is dreadful for me."