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Rh teaching, that Mary always fancied her on the verge of something better. Her vagaries, her neglects, and what to Mary’s mind were positive inhumanities, seemed in a way unconscious. "If I can only get into sufficiently friendly relations," thought Mary, "so that I can convince her that her first and highest duty lies in the direction of the three children, I believe she will have the heroism to do it!" But in this Mistress Mary’s instinct was at fault. Mrs. Grubb took indeed no real cognizance of her immediate surroundings, but she would not have wished to see near duties any more clearly. Neither had she any sane and healthy interest in good works of any kind; she simply had a sort of philanthropic hysteria, and her most successful speeches were so many spasms.