e wouldn't, no, that she
wouldn't; and the squire found that the cook was mistress of the
situation. She was the only personage who did not pass him with deference.
She tossed her head, and told her fellow-servants audibly that he was a
poor, mean-spirited man; and as for missis, she was a regular
Tartar--there! In this they thoroughly agreed. The coachman and footman,
when out with the carriage, and chancing to get a talk with other coachmen
and footmen, were full of it. He was the meanest master they had ever
known; yet they could not say that he paid less wages, or that they were
ill-fed--it was this meddling, peddling interference they resented. The
groom, when he rode into town for the letter-bag, always stopped to tell
Ills friends some fresh instance of it. All the shopkeepers and tradesmen,
and everybody else, had heard of it. But they were none the less
obsequious when the squire passed up the street. The servants were never
so glad as when young master came home with the liberal views imbibed in
modern centres of learning, and with a free, frank mode of speech. But
miss, the sole daughter, they simply hated; she seemed to have ten times
the meanness of her papa, and had been a tell-tale from childhood. The
kitchen said she saved her curl papers to sell as waste paper.

The 'missis' was as haughty, as unapproachable, and disdainful as the
master was inquisitive; she never spoke to, looked at, nor acknowledged
any one--except the three largest tenants and their wives. To these, who
paid heavily, she was gracious. She dressed in the very extreme and front
of fashion--the squire himself quite plainly, without the least pretence
of dandyism. Hateful as the village folk thought her _hauteur_ and open
contempt for them, they said she was more the lady than the squire was the
gentleman.

The squire's time, when at home, like everything else, was peddled away.
He rode into market one day of the week; he went to church on Sundays with
unfailing regularity, and he generally attended the petty sessional bench
on a third day. Upon the bench, from the long standing of his family, he
occupied a prominent position. His mind invariably seized the minutiae of
the evidence, and never seemed to see the point or the broad bearings of
the case. He would utterly confuse a truthful witness, for instance, who
chanced to say that he met the defendant in the road. 'But you said just
now that you and he were both going the same way; how,