they were rhinoceroses. I wanted to see a
live Dissenter, I believe, and yet I wished it
were over. I was almost surprised when
I heard that any of them were engaged in
such peaceful occupations as baking.

"Yes! so Mr. Horner tells me. A Mr.
Lambe, I believe. But, at any rate, he is a
Baptist, and has been in trade. What with
his schismatism and Mr. Gray's methodism, ,
I am afraid all the primitive character of
this place will vanish."

From what I could hear, Mr. Gray sounded
to be taking his own way; at any rate,
more than he had done when he first came
to the village, when his natural timidity had
made him defer to my lady, and seek her
consent and sanction before embarking in
any new plan. But newness was a quality
Lady Ludlow especially disliked. Even in
the fashions of dress and furniture she clung
to the old, to the modes which had prevailed
when she was young; and, though she had a
deep personal regard to Queen Charlotte (to
whom, as I have perhaps already said, she
had been maid-of-honour), yet there was a
tinge of Jacobitism about her, such as made
her extremely dislike to hear Prince Charles
Edward called the Young Pretender, as
many loyal people did in those days, and
made her fond of telling of the thorn-tree in
my lord's park in Scotland, which had been
planted by bonny Queen Mary herself, and
before which every guest in the Castle of
Monkshaven were expected to stand
bareheaded, out of respect to the memory and
misfortunes of the royal planter.

We might play at cards, if we so chose, on
a Sunday; at least I suppose we might, for
my lady and Mr. Mountford used to do so
often when I first went. But we must
neither play cards nor read nor sew on the
fifth of November and on the thirtieth of
January, but must go to church, and
meditate all the rest of the day—and very hard
work meditating was. I would far rather
have scoured a room. That was the reason,
I suppose, why a passive life was seen to
be better discipline for me than an active
one.

But I am wandering away from my lady,
and her dislike to all innovation. Now, it
seemed to me, as far as I heard, that Mr.
Gray was full of nothing but new things, and
that what he first did was to attack all our
established institutions, both in the village
and the parish and also in the nation. To
be sure, I heard of his ways of going on
principally from Miss Galindo, who was apt
to speak more strongly than accurately.

"There he goes," she said, "clucking up
the children just like an old hen, and trying
to teach them about their salvation and their
souls, and I don't know what—things that it
is just blasphemy to speak about out of
church. And he potters old people about
reading their Bibles. I am sure I don't want
to speak disrespectfully about the Holy
Scriptures, but I found old Job Horton busy
reading his Bible yesterday. Says I, 'What
are you reading, and where did you get it,
and who gave it you?' So he made answer
'That he was reading Susannah and the
Elders, for that he had read Bel and the
Dragon till he could pretty near say it off by
heart, and they were two as pretty stories as
ever he had read, and that it was a caution
to him what bad old chaps there were in
the world.' Now, as Job is bed-ridden, I
don't think he is likely to meet with the
Elders, and I say that I think repeating his
Creed, the Commandments, and the Lord's
Prayer, and, maybe, throwing in a verse of
the Psalms, if he wanted a bit of a change,
would have done him far more good than his
pretty stories, as he called them. And
what's the next thing our young parson
does? Why he tries to make us all feel
pitiful for the black slaves, and leaves little
pictures of negroes about, with the question
printed below, Am I not a man and a
brother? just as if I was to be hail-fellow-
well-met with every negro footman. They
do say he takes no sugar in his tea, because
he thinks he sees spots of blood in it. Now
I call that superstition."

The next day it was a still worse story.

"Well, my dear! and how are you? My
lady sent me in to sit a bit with you, while
Mr. Horner looks out some papers for me to
copy. Between ourselves, Mr. Steward
Horner does not like having me for a clerk. It
is all very well, he does not; for, if he were
decently civil to me, I might want a chaperone,
you know, now poor Mrs. Horner is
dead." This was one of Miss Galindo's grim
jokes. "As it is, I try to make him forget
I'm a woman. I do everything as ship-shape
as a masculine man-clerk. I see he can't
find a fault—writing good, spelling correct,
sums all right. And then he squints up at
me with the tail of his eye, and looks glummer
than ever, just because I'm a woman—
as if I could help that. I have gone good
lengths to set his mind at ease. I have stuck
my pen behind my ear, I have made him a
bow instead of a curtsey, I have whistled—
not a tune, I can't pipe up that—nay, if you
won't tell my lady, I don't mind telling you
that I have said Confound it! and Zounds!
I can't get any farther. For all that, Mr.
Horner won't forget I am a lady, and so I am
not half the use I might be, and if it were
not to please my Lady Ludlow, Mr. Horner
and his books might go hang (see how natural
that came out!). And there is an order for
a dozen nightcaps for a bride, and I am so
afraid I shan't have time to do them. Worst
of all, there's Mr. Gray taking advantage of
my absence to seduce Sally!"

"To seduce Sally! Mr. Gray!"

"Pooh, pooh, child! There's many a kind
of seduction. Mr. Gray is seducing Sally to
want to go to church. There has he been
twice at my house, while I have been away in