here were peace
or war between capital and labour, still there was the Sunday
magnificence. What a blessed thing it is for women,--and for men too
certainly,--that there should be a positive happiness to the female
sex in the possession, and in exhibiting the possession, of bright
clothing! It is almost as good for the softening of manners, and the
not permitting of them to be ferocious, as is the faithful study of
the polite arts. At Loring the manners of the mill hands, as they
were called, were upon the whole good,--which I believe was in a
great degree to be attributed to their Sunday magnificence.

The real West-end of Loring was understood by all men to lie in
Paragon Crescent, at the back of St. Botolph's Church. The whole of
this Crescent was built, now some twenty years ago, by Mrs. Fenwick's
father, who had been clever enough to see that as mills were made to
grow in the low town, houses for wealthy people to live in ought to
be made to grow in the high town. He therefore built the Paragon,
and a certain small row of very pretty houses near the end of the
Paragon, called Balfour Place,--and had done very well, and had made
money; and now lay asleep in the vaults below St. Botolph's Church.
No inconsiderable proportion of the comfort of Bullhampton parsonage
is due to Mr. Balfour's success in that achievement of Paragon
Crescent. There were none of the family left at Loring. The widow had
gone away to live at Torquay with a sister, and the only other child,
another daughter, was married to that distinguished barrister on the
Oxford circuit, Mr. Quickenham. Mr. Quickenham and our friend the
parson were very good friends; but they did not see a great deal of
each other, Mr. Fenwick not going up very often to London, and Mr.
Quickenham being unable to use the Vicarage of Bullhampton when on
his own circuit. As for the two sisters, they had very strong ideas
about their husbands' professions; Sophia Quickenham never hesitating
to declare that one was life, and the other stagnation; and Janet
Fenwick protesting that the difference to her seemed to be almost
that between good and evil. They wrote to each other perhaps once a
quarter. But the Balfour family was in truth broken up.

Miss Marrable, Mary Lowther's aunt, lived, of course, at Uphill; but
not in the Crescent, nor yet in Balfour Place. She was an old lady
with very modest means, whose brother had been rector down at St.
Peter's, and she had passed the grea