noon
The next Sunday the Fieldhead pew in Briarfield Church appeared peopled with a prim , trim , fidgety , elderly gentleman , who shifted his spectacles , and changed his position every three minutes ; a patient , placid-looking elderly lady in brown satin ; and two pattern young ladies , in pattern attire , with pattern deportment . Shirley had the air of a black swan or a white crow in the midst of this party , and very forlorn was her aspect . Having brought her into respectable society , we will leave her there a while , and look after Miss Helstone . Separated from Miss Keeldar for the present , as she could not seek her in the midst of her fine relatives , scared away from Fieldhead by the visiting commotion which the new arrivals occasioned in the neighbourhood , Caroline was limited once more to the gray rectory , the solitary morning walk in remote by-paths , the long , lonely afternoon sitting in a quiet parlour which the sun forsook at noon , or in the garden alcove where it shone bright , yet sad , on the ripening red currants trained over the trellis , and on the fair monthly roses entwined between , and through them fell chequered on Caroline sitting in her white summer dress , still as a garden statue . There she read old books , taken from her uncle 's library . The Greek and Latin were of no use to her , and its collection of light literature was chiefly contained on a shelf which had belonged to her aunt Mary -- some venerable Lady 's Magazines , that had once performed a sea-voyage with their owner , and undergone a storm , and whose pages were stained with salt water ; some mad Methodist Magazines , full of miracles and apparitions , of preternatural warnings , ominous dreams , and frenzied fanaticism ; the equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living ; a few old English classics . From these faded flowers Caroline had in her childhood extracted the honey ; they were tasteless to her now .