for blankets and coals every Christmas, and Uphill takes
care to get its share!" He laughed. "No sinecure distributing!"

"We have not been to see the school yet."

"A decrepit old crone, poor old body! She will soon have to give in.
She can't even keep the children from pulling off her spectacles."

"And Sunday School?"

"Well, my father doesn't approve of cramming the poor children. I
believe the Methodists have something of the kind at Downhill; but there
is no one to attend to one here, and the place is quite free of
dissent."

"Cause and effect?" said Captain Carbonel, drily.

"Would you object if we tried to teach the poor children something?"
asked Mrs Carbonel, cautiously.

"Oh no, not at all. All the good ladies are taking it up, I believe.
Mrs Grantley, of Poppleby, is great at it, and I see no harm in it; but
you'll have to reckon with my father. He says there will soon be no
ploughmen, and my mother says there will be no more cooks or housemaids.
You'd better write to old Fogram, he'll back you up."

Mary had it on her lips to ask him about Widow Mole, but he had turned
to Edmund to discuss the hunting and the shooting of the neighbourhood.
They discovered, partly at this time, and partly from other visitors,
that he was the younger son of the squire of Downhill, who had been made
to take Holy Orders without any special fitness for it, because there
was a living likely soon to be ready for him, and in the meantime he was
living at home, an amiable, harmless young man, but bred up so as to
have no idea of the duties of his vocation, and sharing freely in the
sports of his family, acting as if he believed, like his father, that
they were the most important obligations of man; and accepting the
general household belief that only the Methodistical could wish for more
religious practice.

Be it understood that all this happened in the earlier years of the
century, and would be impossible under the revival of the Church that
has since taken place. No one now can hold more than one piece of
preferment at a time, so that parishes cannot be left unprovided. Nor
could Ashley Selby be ordained without a preparation and examination
which would have given him a true idea of what he undertook, or would
have prevented his ordination. This, however, was at a time when the
work of the church had grown very slack, and when a better spirit was
beginning to revive. The father of Mary and Dora had been a zeal