t to the conviviality
on that occasion by informing the company that 'the parson had given the
squire a lick with the rough side of his tongue.' The detection of the
person or persons who had driven off Mr. Parrot's heifer, could hardly
have been more welcome news to the Shepperton tenantry, with whom Mr.
Oldinport was in the worst odour as a landlord, having kept up his rents
in spite of falling prices, and not being in the least stung to emulation
by paragraphs in the provincial newspapers, stating that the Honourable
Augustus Purwell, or Viscount Blethers, had made a return of ten per cent
on their last rent-day. The fact was, Mr. Oldinport had not the slightest
intention of standing for Parliament, whereas he had the strongest
intention of adding to his unentailed estate. Hence, to the Shepperton
farmers it was as good as lemon with their grog to know that the Vicar
had thrown out sarcasms against the Squire's charities, as little better
than those of the man who stole a goose, and gave away the giblets in
alms. For Shepperton, you observe, was in a state of Attic culture
compared with Knebley; it had turnpike roads and a public opinion,
whereas, in the Boeotian Knebley, men's minds and waggons alike moved in
the deepest of ruts, and the landlord was only grumbled at as a necessary
and unalterable evil, like the weather, the weevils, and the turnip-fly.

Thus in Shepperton this breach with Mr. Oldinport tended only to heighten
that good understanding which the Vicar had always enjoyed with the rest
of his parishioners, from the generation whose children he had christened
a quarter of a century before, down to that hopeful generation
represented by little Tommy Bond, who had recently quitted frocks and
trousers for the severe simplicity of a tight suit of corduroys, relieved
by numerous brass buttons. Tommy was a saucy boy, impervious to all
impressions of reverence, and excessively addicted to humming-tops and
marbles, with which recreative resources he was in the habit of
immoderately distending the pockets of his corduroys. One day, spinning
his top on the garden-walk, and seeing the Vicar advance directly towards
it, at that exciting moment when it was beginning to 'sleep'
magnificently, he shouted out with all the force of his lungs--'Stop!
don't knock my top down, now!' From that day 'little Corduroys' had been
an especial favourite with Mr. Gilfil, who delighted to provoke his ready
scorn and wonder by putting