They read the so-called social journals, and absorb the gossip, tittle-tattle, and personalities—­absorb it because they have no means of comparison or of checking the impression it produces of the general loose tone of society.  They know all about it, much more than you do.  No turn of the latest divorce case or great social exposure has escaped them, and the light, careless way in which it is the fashion nowadays to talk openly of such things, as if they were got up like a novel—­only with living characters—­for amusement, has penetrated into this distant circle.  But then they have been to half the leading watering-places—­from Brighton to Scarborough; as for London, it is an open book to them; the railways have long dissipated the pleasing mysteries that once hung over the metropolis.  Talk of this sort is, of course, only talk; still it is not a satisfactory sign of the times.  If the country girl is no longer the hoyden that swung on the gates and romped in the hay, neither has she the innocent thought of the olden days.

At the same time our friends are greatly devoted to the Church—­old people used to attend on Sundays as a sacred and time honoured duty, but the girls leave them far behind, for they drive up in a pony carriage to the distant church at least twice a week besides.  They talk of matins and even-song; they are full of vestments, and have seen ‘such lovely things’ in that line.  At Christmas and Easter they are mainly instrumental in decorating the interior till it becomes perfectly gaudy with colour, and the old folk mutter and shake their heads.  Their devotion in getting hothouse flowers is quite touching.  One is naturally inclined to look with a liberal eye upon what is capable of a good construction.  But is all this quite spontaneous?  Has the new curate nothing at all to do with it?  Is it not considered rather the correct thing to be ‘High’ in views, and even to manifest an Ultramontane tendency?  There is a rather too evident determination to go to the extreme—­the girls are clearly bent upon thrusting themselves to the very front of the parish, so that no one shall be talked of but the Misses ——.  Anything is seized upon, that will afford an opening for posing before the world of the parish, whether it be an extreme fashion in dress or in ritual.

And the parish is splitting up into social cliques.  These girls, the local leaders of fashion, hold their heads far above those farmers’ sons who bear a hand in the field.  No one is eligible who takes a share in manual work:  not even to be invited to the house, or even to be acknowledged if met in the road.  The Misses ——­, whose papa is well-to-do, and simply rides round on horseback to speak to the men with his steam-plough, could not possibly demean themselves to acknowledge the existence of the young men who actually handle a fork in the haymaking time.  Nothing less than the curate is worthy of their smile.  A very great change has come over country society in this way.  Of course, men (and women) with money were always more eligible than those without; but it is not so very long ago that one and all—­well-to-do and poor—­had one bond in common.  Whether they farmed large or small acres, all worked personally.  There was no disgrace in the touch of the plough—­rather the contrary; now it is contamination itself.