Not as he had cared for Cecilia , of course . THAT was entirely different . That love of romance and dream and glamour could never , he thought , return . But Rosemary was beautiful and sweet and dear -- very dear . She was the best of companions . He was happier in her company than he had ever expected to be again . She would be an ideal mistress for his home , a good mother to his children . During the years of his widowhood Mr. Meredith had received innumerable hints from brother members of Presbytery and from many parishioners who could not be suspected of any ulterior motive , as well as from some who could , that he ought to marry again : But these hints never made any impression on him . It was commonly thought he was never aware of them . But he was quite acutely aware of them . And in his own occasional visitations of common sense he knew that the common sensible thing for him to do was to marry . But common sense was not the strong point of John Meredith , and to choose out , deliberately and cold-bloodedly , some `` suitable '' woman , as one might choose a housekeeper or a business partner , was something he was quite incapable of doing . How he hated that word `` suitable . '' It reminded him so strongly of James Perry . `` A SUIT able woman of SUIT able age , '' that unctuous brother of the cloth had said , in his far from subtle hint . For the moment John Meredith had had a perfectly unbelievable desire to rush madly away and propose marriage to the youngest , most unsuitable woman it was possible to discover . Mrs. Marshall Elliott was his good friend and he liked her . But when she had bluntly told him he should marry again he felt as if she had torn away the veil that hung before some sacred shrine of his innermost life , and he had been more or less afraid of her ever since . He knew there were women in his congregation `` of suitable age '' who would marry him quite readily . That fact had seeped through all his abstraction very early in his ministry in Glen St. Mary .
They were good , substantial , uninteresting women , one or two fairly comely , the others not exactly so and John XXXXX would as soon have thought of marrying any one of them as of hanging himself .
Cecilia Elliott Mary Meredith Perry Presbytery Rosemary one point years