"
Until then neither of them had alluded to Kesiah, whom they accepted
by ignoring much as if she had been one of the familiar pieces of
furniture, at which they never glanced because they were so firmly
convinced that it stood in its place. She had eaten her dinner with the
relish of a person to whom food, taken at regular hours three times a
day, has become the prime consolation in life; and when the question
was put to her, she was obliged to ask them to repeat it because she had
been thoughtfully regarding a dish of baked tomatoes and wondering if a
single yielding to temptation would increase a tendency to the gout that
had lately developed.
"What do you know of the Revercombs, Kesiah? Are they in any degree
above the common people about here?"
"The miller is a rather extraordinary character, I believe," she
answered, lifting the spoon out of the dish of tomatoes as it was handed
to her, and then shaking her head with a sigh and letting it fall. "Mr.
Chamberlayne says he is quite well educated, but the rest of them, of
course, are very primitive and plain. They have always been strait-laced
and honest and I hear that the mother--she came from Piping Tree and
was one of the Hawtreys--is violently opposed to her son's marriage
with Molly Merryweather.
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