hamber
which should bring it into more habitable condition. He hinted to his
man Larkin that an additional fire might probably be needed in the house
during the latter part of winter; and before January had gone out, he
had most agreeably surprised the delighted and curious Tew partners with
a very large addition to his usual orders,--embracing certain condiments
in the way of spices, dried fruits, and cordials, which had for a long
time been foreign to the larder of the parsonage.

Such indications, duly commented on, as they were most zealously, could
not fail to excite a great buzz of talk and of curiosity throughout the
town.

"I knew it," says Mrs. Tew, authoritatively, setting back her spectacles
from her postal duties;--"these 'ere grave widowers are allers the first
to pop off, and git married."

"Tourtelot!" said the dame, on a January night, when the evidence had
come in overwhelmingly,--"Tourtelot! what does it all mean?"

"D'n' know," says the Deacon, stirring his flip,--"d'n' know. It's my
opinion the parson has his sly humors about him."

"Do you think it's true, Samuel?"

"Waael, Huldy,--I _du_."

"Tourtelot! finish your flip, and go to bed; it's past ten."

And the Deacon went.

XIV

Toward the latter end of the winter there arrived at the parsonage the
new mistress,--in the person of Miss Eliza Johns, the elder sister of
the incumbent, and a spinster of the ripe age of three-and-thirty. For
the last twelve years she had maintained a lonely, but matronly, command
of the old homestead of the late Major Johns, in the town of Canterbury.
She was intensely proud of the memory of her father, and of _his_ father
before him,--every inch a Johns. No light cause could have provoked her
to a sacrifice of the name; and of weightier causes she had been spared
the trial. The marriage of her brother had always been more or less a
source of mortification to her. The Handbys, though excellent plain
people, were of no particular distinction. Rachel had a pretty face,
with which Benjamin had grown suddenly demented. That source of
mortification and of disturbed intimacy was now buried in the grave.
Benjamin had won a reputation for dignity and ability which was
immensely gratifying to her. She had assured him of it again and again
in her occasional letters. The success of his Election Sermon had been
an event of the greatest interest to her, which she had expressed in an
epistle of three pages, with every c