Those whom I have named, together with Mr. Mainwaring the rector, and Mr. Surtees his curate, made up the very sparse aristocracy of Dillsborough.  The Hamptons of Hampton Wick were Ufford men, and belonged, rather to Norrington than Dillsborough.  The Botseys, also from Norrington, were members of the U.R.U., or Ufford and Rufford United Hunt Club; but they did not much affect Dillsborough as a town.  Mr. Mainwaring, who has been mentioned, lived in another brick house behind the church, the old parsonage of St. John’s.  There was also a Mrs. Mainwaring, but she was an invalid.  Their family consisted of one son, who was at Brasenose at this time.  He always had a horse during the Christmas vacation, and if rumour did not belie him, kept two or three up at Oxford.  Mr. Surtees, the curate, lived in lodgings in the town.  He was a painstaking, clever, young man, with aspirations in church matters, which were always being checked by his rector.  Quieta non movere was the motto by which the rector governed his life, and he certainly was not at all the man to allow his curate to drive him into activity.

Such, at the time of our story, was the little town of
Dillsborough.

CHAPTER II

The Morton Family

I can hardly describe accurately the exact position of the Masters family without first telling all that I know about the Morton family; and it is absolutely essential that the reader should know all the Masters family intimately.  Mr. Masters, as I have said in the last chapter, was the attorney in Dillsborough, and the Mortons had been for centuries past the squires of Bragton.

I need not take the reader back farther than old Reginald Morton.  He had come to the throne of his family as a young man, and had sat upon it for more than half a century.  He had been a squire of the old times, having no inclination for London seasons, never wishing to keep up a second house, quite content with his position as quire of Bragton, but with considerable pride about him as to that position.  He had always liked to have his house full, and had hated petty oeconomies.  He had for many years hunted the county at his own expense, the amusement at first not having been so expensive as it afterwards became.  When he began the work, it had been considered sufficient to hunt twice a week.  Now the Rufford and Ufford hounds have four days, and sometimes a bye.  It went much against Mr. Reginald Morton’s pride when he was first driven to take a subscription.

But the temporary distress into which the family fell was caused not so much by his own extravagance as by that of two sons, and by his indulgence in regard to them.  He had three children, none of whom were very fortunate in life.  The eldest, John, married the daughter of a peer, stood for Parliament, had one son, and died before he was forty, owing something over 20,000 pounds.  The estate was then worth