hurch if he were in his right place as
Archbishop of Canterbury; in this opinion he entirely agreed with his
wife.

Besides these three male specimens of the Chillingly race, the fairer
sex was represented, in the absence of her ladyship, who still kept her
room, by three female Chillinglys, sisters of Sir Peter, and all three
spinsters. Perhaps one reason why they had remained single was, that
externally they were so like each other that a suitor must have been
puzzled which to choose, and may have been afraid that if he did choose
one, he should be caught next day kissing another one in mistake. They
were all tall, all thin, with long throats--and beneath the throats a
fine development of bone. They had all pale hair, pale eyelids, pale
eyes, and pale complexions. They all dressed exactly alike, and their
favourite colour was a vivid green: they were so dressed on this
occasion.

As there was such similitude in their persons, so, to an ordinary
observer, they were exactly the same in character and mind. Very
well behaved, with proper notions of female decorum: very distant and
reserved in manner to strangers; very affectionate to each other and
their relations or favourites; very good to the poor, whom they looked
upon as a different order of creation, and treated with that sort of
benevolence which humane people bestow upon dumb animals. Their minds
had been nourished on the same books--what one read the others had read.
The books were mainly divided into two classes,--novels, and what they
called "good books." They had a habit of taking a specimen of each
alternately; one day a novel, then a good book, then a novel again, and
so on. Thus if the imagination was overwarmed on Monday, on Tuesday it
was cooled down to a proper temperature; and if frost-bitten on Tuesday,
it took a tepid bath on Wednesday. The novels they chose were indeed
rarely of a nature to raise the intellectual thermometer into blood
heat: the heroes and heroines were models of correct conduct. Mr.
James's novels were then in vogue, and they united in saying that those
"were novels a father might allow his daughters to read." But though an
ordinary observer might have failed to recognize any distinction between
these three ladies, and, finding them habitually dressed in green, would
have said they were as much alike as one pea is to another, they had
their idiosyncratic differences, when duly examined. Miss Margaret, the
eldest, was the commandin