at all to Mr. Jerome at fust; but after all, I begun to think as there was a maeny things worse nor goin’ to chapel, an’ you’d better do that nor not pay your way.  Mr. Jerome had a very pleasant manner with him, an’ there was niver another as kept a gig, an’ ’ud make a settlement on me like him, chapel or no chapel.  It seemed very odd to me for a long while, the preachin’ without book, an’ the stannin’ up to one long prayer, istid o’ changin’ your postur.  But la! there’s nothin’ as you mayn’t get used to i’ time; you can al’ys sit down, you know, before the prayer’s done.  The ministers say pretty nigh the same things as the Church parsons, by what I could iver make out, an’ we’re out o’ chapel i’ the mornin’ a deal sooner nor they’re out o’ church.  An’ as for pews, ourn’s is a deal comfortabler nor aeny i’ Milby Church.’

Mrs. Jerome, you perceive, had not a keen susceptibility to shades of doctrine, and it is probable that, after listening to Dissenting eloquence for thirty years, she might safely have re-entered the Establishment without performing any spiritual quarantine.  Her mind, apparently, was of that non-porous flinty character which is not in the least danger from surrounding damp.  But on the question of getting start of the sun on the day’s business, and clearing her conscience of the necessary sum of meals and the consequent ‘washing up’ as soon as possible, so that the family might be well in bed at nine, Mrs. Jerome was susceptible; and the present lingering pace of things, united with Mr. Jerome’s unaccountable obliviousness, was not to be borne any longer.  So she rang the bell for Sally.

‘Goodness me, Sally! go into the garden an’ see after your master.  Tell him it’s goin’ on for six, an’ Mr. Tryan ‘ull niver think o’ comin’ now, an’ it’s time we got tea over.  An’ he’s lettin’ Lizzie stain her frock, I expect, among them strawberry beds.  Mek her come in this minute.’

No wonder Mr. Jerome was tempted to linger in the garden, for though the house was pretty and well deserved its name—­’the White House’, the tall damask roses that clustered over the porch being thrown into relief by rough stucco of the most brilliant white, yet the garden and orchards were Mr. Jerome’s glory, as well they might be; and there was nothing in which he had a more innocent pride—­peace to a good man’s memory! all his pride was innocent—­than in conducting a hitherto uninitiated visitor over his grounds, and making him in some degree aware of the incomparable advantages possessed by the inhabitants of the White House in the matter of red-streaked apples, russets, northern greens (excellent for baking), swan-egg pears, and early vegetables, to say nothing of flowering ‘srubs,’ pink hawthorns, lavender bushes more than ever Mrs. Jerome could use, and, in short, a superabundance of everything that a person retired from business could desire to possess himself or to share with his friends.  The garden was one of