TRJ - #2

PREDICTION

"You can't do this!" Miss Bradford replied, but this time in the tone of a very young child who has been thwarted in its pursuit of a plaything. The rector was standing half a flight of stair abbove her, sot htat she had to gaze up at him like a supplicant. "My mother has need of you..."
"My dear Miss Bradford," he interrupted coldly. "There were many people here with needs this past year, needs that you and your family were in a position to have satisfied. And yet you were not...here. Kindly ask yourmother to do me the honor of advancing the same tolerance for my absence now that your family arrogated for so long in regard to its own." (Year of Wonders, p.16~17)

This passage was quite intriguing. It was in the beginning, before the actual story that Miss Bradford was not being treated respectfully by both Anna and the rector(Reverend Mompellion). On page 12, Anna suddenly reencounters Elizabeth Bradford (daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bradford) for the first time in about a year and a half and treats her coldly as if she had sinned. Miss Elizabeth desires to see Reverend Mompellion, but for some reason, he turns her down and does not want to meet her or come with her to her mother.

In my opinion, this must have something to do with all the villagers and that the Bradfords have left the village in haste for a peculiar reason. This is becasue in the passage, prior to the paragraph before this, Reverend Mompellion says, "There were many people here with needs this past year, needs that you and your family were in a position to have satisfied. And yet you were not...here." There must have been a problem of some sort that made the Bradfords "not...here".
Therefore, I predict that the coldness pressed on Miss Bradford and her family, was a questions of abandonning the village for their own good.