formed that the yellow-faced old gentleman could pave
the road to church with diamonds and hardly miss them. The nuptial
benediction is to be a superior one, proceeding from a very reverend, a
dean, and the lady is to be given away, as an extraordinary present, by
somebody who comes express from the Horse Guards.

Mrs Miff is more intolerant of common people this morning, than she
generally is; and she his always strong opinions on that subject, for it
is associated with free sittings. Mrs Miff is not a student of political
economy (she thinks the science is connected with dissenters; 'Baptists
or Wesleyans, or some o' them,' she says), but she can never understand
what business your common folks have to be married. 'Drat 'em,' says Mrs
Miff 'you read the same things over 'em' and instead of sovereigns get
sixpences!'

Mr Sownds the beadle is more liberal than Mrs Miff--but then he is not
a pew-opener. 'It must be done, Ma'am,' he says. 'We must marry 'em. We
must have our national schools to walk at the head of, and we must have
our standing armies. We must marry 'em, Ma'am,' says Mr Sownds, 'and
keep the country going.'

Mr Sownds is sitting on the steps and Mrs Miff is dusting in the church,
when a young couple, plainly dressed, come in. The mortified bonnet of
Mrs Miff is sharply turned towards them, for she espies in this
early visit indications of a runaway match. But they don't want to be
married--'Only,' says the gentleman, 'to walk round the church.' And as
he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her vinegary
face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip and
crackle.

Mrs Miff resumes her dusting and plumps up her cushions--for the
yellow-faced old gentleman is reported to have tender knees--but keeps
her glazed, pew-opening eye on the young couple who are walking round
the church. 'Ahem,' coughs Mrs Miff whose cough is drier than the hay in
any hassock in her charge, 'you'll come to us one of these mornings, my
dears, unless I'm much mistaken!'

They are looking at a tablet on the wall, erected to the memory of
someone dead. They are a long way off from Mrs Miff, but Mrs Miff can
see with half an eye how she is leaning on his arm, and how his head is
bent down over her. 'Well, well,' says Mrs Miff, 'you might do worse.
For you're a tidy pair!'

There is nothing personal in Mrs Miff's remark. She merely speaks of
stock-in-trade. She is hardly more curious in couples