A dreary place was the parsonage of St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East for the abode of a gentleman.  Mr Outhouse had not, in his whole parish, a parishioner with whom he could consort.  The greatest men around him were the publicans, and the most numerous were men employed in and around the docks.  Dredgers of mud, navvies employed on suburban canals, excavators, loaders and unloaders of cargo, cattle drivers, whose driving, however, was done mostly on board ship—­such and such like were the men who were the fathers of the families of St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East.  And there was there, not far removed from the muddy estuary of a little stream that makes its black way from the Essex marshes among the houses of the poorest of the poor into the Thames, a large commercial establishment for turning the carcasses of horses into manure.  Messrs Flowsem and Blurt were in truth the great people of St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East; but the closeness of their establishment was not an additional attraction to the parsonage.  They were liberal, however, with their money, and Mr Outhouse was disposed to think, custom perhaps having made the establishment less objectionable to him than it was at first, that St. Diddulph’s-in-the-East would be more of a Pandemonium than it now was, if by any sanitary law Messrs Flowsem and Blurt were compelled to close their doors.  ‘Non olet,’ he would say with a grim smile when the charitable cheque of the firm would come punctually to hand on the first Saturday after Christmas.

But such a house as his would be, as he knew, but a poor residence for his wife’s nieces.  Indeed, without positively saying that he was unwilling to receive them, he had, when he first heard of the breaking up of the house in Curzon Street, shewn that he would rather not take upon his shoulders so great a responsibility.  He and his wife had discussed the matter between them, and had come to the conclusion that they did not know what kind of things might have been done in Curzon Street.  They would think no evil, they said; but the very idea of a married woman with a lover was dreadful to them.  It might be that their niece was free from blame.  They hoped so.  And even though her sin had been of ever so deep a dye, they would take her in if it were indeed necessary.  But they hoped that such help from them might not be needed.  They both knew how to give counsel to a poor woman, how to rebuke a poor man, how to comfort, encourage, or to upbraid the poor.  Practice had told them how far they might go with some hope of doing good and at what stage of demoralisation no good from their hands was any longer within the scope of fair expectation.  But all this was among the poor.  With what words to encourage such a one as their niece Mrs Trevelyan, to encourage her or to rebuke her, as her conduct might seem to make necessary, they both felt that They were altogether ignorant.  To them Mrs Trevelyan was a fine lady.  To Mr Outhouse, Sir Marmaduke had ever been a fine gentleman, given much to worldly