The widow's talent for dressmaking (she had been a
milliner's apprentice before marriage), though of a high order, and
exerted to the utmost, failed to please. Miss Pillbody's thorough
knowledge of French, and the higher branches of an elegant education, as
well as her proficiency on the piano, and her sweet, simple style of
ballad singing, were worse than useless acquirements in her
uncles' families.
Her uncles were cold, stern, ignorant men, who had an intense hatred for
the mere accomplishments of life. Each had two daughters, who, with the
natural tastes of the sex, were not averse to the graces of education,
in the abstract, but could not bear to see them displayed by their
"stuck-up, pauper cousin," as they often termed that hapless young lady
in private conversation. A kind offer, which she was imprudent enough,
to make, to teach them all she knew, had set them against her from
the first.
The widow endured the cold looks and cutting words of her husband's
relatives, and even the reproaches which they heaped upon his folly,
with a widow's patience, and seemed content to remain a poor,
broken-down, dependent creature.
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