, especially in the softened tempers of
that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming
countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups,
jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter, cheering
words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts afforded
by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the
Squire, who preferred productive labor, justly complained, "would never
finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran grandsire, who
still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in a family that "came
too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little behind, in the whitest
of trousers and the stiffest of neckcloths--with a look of suppressed
roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness
of mien--without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had
done any thing yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a
credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose
from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for
some masculine oak, whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little
confined to self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she
had helped many a village lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a
marriage gift from her own privy purse; notwithstanding the assurances
with which she accompanied the marriage gift,--viz., that "the
bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his ungrateful sex; but that
it was a comfort to think that it would be all one in the approaching
crash." So that she had her warm partisans, especially amongst the
young; while the slim Captain, on whose arm she rested her forefinger,
was at least a civilspoken gentleman, who had never done any harm, and
who would doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay,
even the fat footman, who came last with the family Prayer-book, had his
due share in the general association of neighborly kindness between hall
and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the
right-hand of fellowship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of
it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the
Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew
under the gallery) were.

On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was "moved withal," and
a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and