Mr Primrose and his daughter had now been at Smatterton a few days, and as the two villages were so remarkably intimate with each other, it was impossible for anything to take place in the one without its being known in the other. The arrival of the parties had been made known, as we have seen, at the rectory of Neverden, and apprehensions were entertained by the daughters of Mr Darnley that their father would be grievously liberal of his wise exhortations to his yet enamoured son. And when two or three days had passed away, and not a word of public notice had been taken of the fact in the family of the rector, the young ladies began to please themselves with the hope that no notice would be taken of the matter, and they trusted that some circumstance or other might remove Penelope again, and finally, from Smatterton; or, as they thought it not unlikely, their brother might soon fix his affections elsewhere. It was very clear to the young ladies that Miss Glossop, notwithstanding her recent disappointment, was something of an admirer of their brother; and it was obvious that Sir George Aimwell was desirous of cultivating an acquaintance between the parties. The worthy baronet was unusually eloquent in praising Miss Glossop, and mightily ingenious in discovering innumerable, and to other eyes undiscernible, good qualities in his fair kinswoman. But though Sir George was a magistrate and a game preserver, he was no conjurer. He was not aware that there could exist any diversities of taste; but he seemed to imagine that those qualities which were agreeable to himself must be agreeable to everybody else; and when he was descanting on the multitudinous excellences of Miss Glossop, and describing her to Robert Darnley as possessing every possible and impossible virtue, he did not see that the young man's mind was of a complexion widely different from his own. It was not therefore to this young lady that the daughters of the rector of Neverden looked forward as the person likely to liberate them from Miss Primrose. Their hope was altogether of an undefined nature. They merely hoped and trusted that something would occur to relieve them from their present uncomfortable condition. This undefined hope is, perhaps, after all the best that we can entertain. It may appear not very rational, but we have a notion that in serious truth it is a great deal more rational than that hope which seems to have a foundation in something probable: for it is in the very nature and condition of earthly events, that they almost invariably disappoint expectation and miserably mock our sagacity. If therefore our hopes be of something definite, they will be almost assuredly disappointed; but if we only hope generally and indefinitely that something, we know not what, may occur to remove the cause of our troubles, we may have a much better chance that we shall not be disappointed. The chances in our favor are thus indefinitely multiplied.