nner came at last: the table was loaded with awkward profusion; but
it was as close an imitation as we could yet contrive of our opulent
neighbour's display. No less than four footmen, discharged as splendid
superfluities from the household of a duke, waited behind our four
chairs, to make their remarks on our style of eating in contrast with
the polished performances at their late master's. But Mrs. Molasses had
exactly four. The argument was unanswerable. Silence and sullenness
reigned through the banquet; but on the retreat of the four gentlemen
who did us the honour of attending, the whole tale of evil burst forth.
What is the popularity of man? The whole family had already dropped from
the highest favouritism into the most angry disrepute. A kind of little
rebellion raged against us in the village: we were hated, scorned, and
libelled on all sides. My unlucky remittances had done the deed.

The village milliner, a cankered old carle, who had made caps and
bonnets for the vicinage during the last forty years, led the battle.
The wife and daughters of a man of East Indian wealth were not to be
clothed like meaner souls; and the sight of three London bonnets in my
pew had set the old sempstress in a blaze. The flame was easily
propagated. The builder of my chaise-cart was irritated at the
handsome barouche in which my family now moved above the heads of
mankind. The rumour that champagne had appeared at the cottage roused
the indignation of the honest vintner who had so long supplied me
with port: and professional insinuations of the modified nature of
this London luxury were employed to set the sneerers of the village
against me and mine. Our four footmen had been instantly discovered by
the eye of an opulent neighbour; and the competition was at once
laughed at as folly, and resented as an insult. Every hour saw some of
my old friends falling away from me. An unlucky cold, which seized one
of my daughters a week before my return, had cut away my twenty years'
acquaintance, the village-doctor, from my cause; for the illness of an
"heiress" was not to be cured by less than the first medical authority
of the province. The supreme Aesculapius was accordingly called in;
and his humbler brother swore, in the bitterness of his soul, that he
would never forget the affront on this side of death's door. The
inevitable increase of dignity which communicated itself to the
manners of my whole household did the rest; and if my wif