Explore "Lavinia" by Rhoda Broughton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Why, he but sleeps! / If he be dead, we'll make his grave his bed; / With female fairies shall thy tomb be haunted."
Mrs. Darcy has always set her face strongly against forenoon visitors. The claims of the parish upon her time have never -- thorough-going, though not enthusiastic, clergywoman as she is -- preferred at whatever hour of the day or night, found her wanting. Always the dispensary ticket, the medicine-chest, the patient ear, the sensible counsel, the wisely sharp rebuke, the warm fellow-feeling in trouble, are ready. But that idle country neighbours should drive the ploughshare of their vacuity through the furrows of her already overfilled forenoon, when they might just as easily bestow their tediousness upon her comparatively free afternoon, is beyond the limits of her patience. Her soul, though taking up its task from the beginning, with the same handsome willingness as her slender body, has from the first revolted against being nothing but a clergywoman.