Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/98

 chapels, and her husband was worried by other Archdeacons with strong Church principles and peaceable wives. Afterwards she took to drinking a bottle of porter in the middle of the day, and looking after the manners, morals, and health of the curate and the organist. She walked into their lodgings at inconvenient hours of the day and night, gave them excellent advice when they were well; entangled them both in matrimonial engagements, and doctored them when she thought they looked harassed or pale. This also was a cause of considerable annoyance to the Archdeacon. The two young men wearied her at length by their ingratitude, and she passed from them to the production of beautiful furniture. There is a kind of art called Dutch Marquetrie work, which consists of staining squares, circles, and stars on white wood, and afterwards making the whole surface sticky with a varnish composed of turpentine and other ingredients. The wood thus treated can afterwards be made into small tables and fragile stools very exquisite to look at. Mrs. Crossley created large numbers of these, and laid the Archdeacon's books on them. It was after she had exhausted the possibilities of artistic endeavour that she fell under the spell of physical culture. She did exercises with pulleys, discarded garments she had always been accustomed to, and gave up her bottle of stout. She became unpopular with the younger women because she inveighed against their favourite clothes, and with