being stern,
sober, and steady, Mrs. Ray immediately married herself to her eldest
child. Dorothea became the prop against which she would henceforth
grow. And against Dorothea she had grown ever since, with the
exception of one short year. In that year Dorothea had taken a
husband to herself and had lost him;--so that there were two widows
in the same house. She, like her mother, had married early, having
joined her lot to that of a young clergyman near Baslehurst; but he
had lived but a few months, and Mrs. Ray's eldest child had come back
to her mother's cottage, black, and stiff, and stern, in widow's
weeds,--Mrs. Prime by name. Black, and stiff, and stern, in widow's
weeds, she had remained since, for nine years following, and those
nine years will bring us to the beginning of our story.

As regards Mrs. Ray herself, I think it was well that poor Mr. Prime
had died. It assured to her the support which she needed. It must,
however, be acknowledged that Mrs. Prime was a harder taskmaster than
Dorothea Ray had been, and that the mother might have undergone a
gentler ruling had the daughter never become a wife. I think there
was much in the hardness of the weeds she wore. It seemed as though
Mrs. Prime in selecting her crape, her bombazine, and the models of
her caps, had resolved to repress all ideas of feminine softness;--as
though she had sworn to herself, with a great oath, that man should
never again look on her with gratified eyes. The materials she
wore have made other widows very pleasant to be seen,--with a sad
thoughtful pleasantness indeed, but still very pleasant. There was
nothing of that with Mrs. Prime. When she came back to her mother's
cottage near Baslehurst she was not yet twenty years old, but she was
rough with weeds. Her caps were lumpy, heavy, full of woe, and clean
only as decency might require,--not nicely clean with feminine care.
The very stuff of which they were made was brown, rather than white,
and her dress was always the same. It was rough, and black, and
clinging,--disagreeable to the eye in its shape, as will always be
the dress of any woman which is worn day after day through all hours.
By nature and education Mrs. Prime was a prim, tidy woman, but it
seemed that her peculiar ideas of duty required her to militate
against her nature and education, at any rate in appearance. And this
was her lot in life before she had yet reached her twentieth year!

Dorothea Ray had not been wantin