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And Mr Irwine's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It was quite a pity handsohters That fine old lady herself orth driving ten miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her old-fashioned dignity raceful subject for conversation in turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses, the news fro poor Lady Dacey to death But no one ever thought ofthe Miss Irwines, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded theuely as "the gentlefolks" If any one had asked old Job Duave hientlefolks, last winter"; andSteene dwelt ave her for her cough Under this na refractory children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several snizant of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones hich they had intended to hit Farh a less mythical medium, the Miss Irwines were quite superfluous existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, ht have had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer

Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no senerous-blooded clergyman, the Rev Adolphus Irwine, had not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a corey under the powder, would have had tall sons and bloohters--such possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under the sun As it was--having with all his three livings nohis splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, as usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as beca for a faht-and-forty, a bachelor, not ly, if any one alluded to it, that he ences which a ould never have allowed him And perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusias sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtletenderness for obscure and ence that hters, which was thefondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults