it?"

"Don't you know? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and holds toast! I
never thought of it, I assure you, till my friend Cosey said to me one
morning when he was breakfasting at my rooms, 'Higginbotham, how is it
that you, who like to have things comfortable about you, don't have
a cat?' 'Upon my life,' said I, 'one can't think of everything at a
time,'--just like you, Squire."

"Pshaw," said Mr. Hazeldean, gruffly, "not at all like me. And I'll
thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I'm
speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They
look something like now, my stocks, don't they, Harry? I declare that
the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a
little improvement adds to the--to the--"

"Charm of the landscape," put in Miss Jemina, sentimentally.

The squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination; but
leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly off with--

"And if I had listened to Parson Dale--"

"You would have done a very wise thing," said a voice behind, as the
parson presented himself in the rear.

"Wise thing? Why, surely, Mr. Dale," said Mrs. Hazeldean, with spirit,
for she always resented the least contradiction to her lord and
master--perhaps as an interference with her own special right and
prerogative!--"why, surely if it is necessary to have stocks, it is
necessary to repair them."

"That's right! go it, Harry!" cried the squire, chuckling, and
rubbing his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at the parson:
"St--St--at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?"

"My dear ma'am," said the parson, replying in preference to the lady,
"there are many institutions in the country which are very old, look
very decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down
for all that."

"You would reform them, then," said Mrs. Hazeldean, doubtfully, and
with a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics
now,--that's your business."

"No, I would not, ma'am," said the parson, stoutly. "What on earth would
you do, then?" quoth the squire. "Just let 'em alone," said the parson.
"Master Frank, there's a Latin maxim which was often put in the mouth of
Sir Robert Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar,
'Quieta non movere.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet! I would not
destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the ill-disposed like a