Belford Regis Author:Mary Russell Mitford Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: by sea and land, abroad and at home, where sick people go to get well; at one of which she, poor lady, died. Then he espoused a buxom, jolly, merry widow, who... more » had herself had two husbands, and who seemed likely to see him out; but the smallpox came in her way, and she died also. Then he married his present lady, a charming woman, neither fat nor thin, nor young nor old — not very healthy, nor particularly sickly — who makes him very happy, and seems to find her own happiness in making him so. He has no children by any of his wives; but has abundance of adherents in parlour and hall. Half the poor of the parish are occasionally to be found in bis kitchen, and his dining- room is the seat of hospitality, not only to his old friends of the town and his new friends of the country, but to all the families of all his wives. He talks of them (for he talks more now than he did at the Belford election, having fallen into the gossiping habit of " narrative old age ") in the quietest manner possible, mixing, in a way the most diverting and the most unconscious, stories of his first wife and his second, of his present and his last. He seems to have been perfectly happy with all of them, especially with this. But if he should have the misfortune to lose that delightful person, he would certainly console himself, and prove his respect for the state, by marrying again; and such is his reputation as a super-excellent husband, especially in the main article of giving his wives their own way, that, in spite of his being even now an octogenarian, I have no doubt but there would be abundance of fair candidates for the heart and hand of the good Rector of Hadley. KING HARWOOD. The good town of Belford swarmed, of course, with single ladies — especially with single ladies of that despise...« less