"It is very complete," she sighed, as if this had removed all hope from her, and she added, "I suppose we had better take it." V. We certainly did not take it for the sake of being near the Bentleys, neither of whom had given us particular reason to desire their further acquaintance, though the young lady had agreeably modified herself when apart from her mother. In fact, we went to Gormanville because it was an exceptional chance to get a beautiful place for a very little money, where we could go early and stay late. But no sooner had we acted from this quite personal, not to say selfish, motive than we were rewarded with the sweetest overtures of neighborliness by the Bentleys. They waited, of course, till we were settled in our house before they came to call upon Mrs. March, but they had been preceded by several hospitable offerings from their garden, their dairy, and their hen-house, which were very welcome in the days of our first uncertainty as to trades-people. We analyzed this hospitality as an effect of that sort of nature in Mrs. Bentley which can equally assert its superiority by blessing or banning. Evidently, since chance had again thrown us in her way, she would not go out of it to be offensive, but would continue in it, and make the best of us. No doubt Glendenning had talked us into the Bentleys; and this my wife said she hated most of all; for we should have to live up to the notion of us imparted by a young man from the impressions of the moment when he saw us purple in the light of his dawning love. In justice to Glendenning, however, I must say that he did nothing, by a show of his own assiduities, to urge us upon the Bentleys after we came to Gormanville. If we had not felt so sure of him, we might have thought he was keeping his regard for us a little too modestly in the background. He made us one cool little call, the evening of our arrival, in which he had the effect of anxiety to get away as soon as possible; and after that we saw him no more until he came with Miss Bentley and her mother a week later. His forbearance was all the more remarkable because his church and his rectory were just across the street from the Conwell place, at the corner of another street, where we could see their wooden gothic in the cold shadow of the maples with which the green in front of them was planted. During all that time Glendenning's personal elevation remained invisible to us, and we began to wonder if he were not that most lamentable of fellow-creatures, a clerical snob. I am not sure still that he might not have been so in some degree, there was such a mixture of joy that was almost abject in his genuine affection for us when Mrs. Bentley openly approved us on her first visit. I dare say he would not have quite abandoned us in any case; but he must have felt responsible for us, and it must have been such a load off him when she took that turn with us.