leasure of cakes and ale half
suspiciously in the broad sunshine. The leading shopkeepers of
Westchurch and their humbler brethren from Farley Row. All the country
gentry too. Lord and Lady Fallowfeild and a goodly company from Whitney
Park, Lord Denier and a large contingent from Grimshott Place, the
Cathcarts of Newlands, and many more persons of undoubted
consequence--specially perhaps in their own eyes.

Not to mention a small army of local clergy--who ever display a
touching alacrity in attending festivals, even those of a secular
character--with camp-followers, in the form of wives and families,
galore.

And now, at last, all was over,--balls, sports, theatricals,
dinners,--the last in the case of the labourers, with the unlovely
adjunct of an ox roasted whole. Even the final garden-party, designed
to include such persons as it was, socially speaking, a trifle
difficult to place--Image, owner of the big Shotover brewery, for
instance, who was shouldering his way so vigorously towards fortune and
a seat on the bench of magistrates; the younger members of the firm of
Goteway & Fox, Solicitors of Westchurch; Goodall, the Methodist miller
from Parson's Holt, and certain sporting yeoman farmers with their
comely womankind--even this final entertainment, with all its small
triumphs and heart-burnings, flutterings of youthful inexperience,
aspirations, condescensions, had gone, like the rest of the week's
junketings, to swell the sum of things accomplished, of all that which
is past and done with, and will never come again.

Fully an hour ago, Dr. Knott, "under plea of waiting cases, had hitched
his ungainly, thick-set figure into his high gig.

"Plenty of fine folks, eh, Timothy?" he said to the ferret-faced groom
beside him, as he gathered up the reins; and the brown mare, knowing
the hand on her mouth, laid herself out to her work. "Handsome young
couple as anybody need wish to see. Not much business doing there for
me, I fancy, unless it lies in the nursery line."

"Say those Brockhurst folks mostly dies airly, though," remarked
Timothy, with praiseworthy effort at professional encouragement.

"Eh! so you've heard that story too, have you?"--and John Knott drew
the lash gently across the hollow of the mare's back.

"This 'ere Sir Richard's the third baronet I've a-seen, and I bean't so
very old neither."

The doctor looked down at the spare little man with a certain snarling
affection, as he said:--"Oh no!