"Oh, thank you so much," said Annie. She coloured faintly. "Perhaps you would not be straight," she said after a minute, "if you had no prospect whatever in life but Uncle Maurice--Uncle Maurice, and all the old women in the parish, every one of them, setting their caps at him, and knitting comforters for his dear throat, and working slippers for his dear feet, and asking about his precious cough, and if he would like some more red-currant jelly. Perhaps _you_ would be a little crooked if you had to sit by the hour holding slobbering babies on your lap at mothers' meetings, and getting your best frock jammed over by the horrid village children. Oh, it is not a life to recommend itself, I can tell you!"

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