o piqued herself
on her perception of character, threw her brown velvet eyes on her
neighbour, Mr. Penruddock, and cross-examined him in mystical whispers.
She soon recognised his love of nature; and this allowed her to dissert
on the subject, at once sublime and inexhaustible, with copiousness
worthy of the theme. When she found he was an entomologist, and that it
was not so much mountains as insects which interested him, she shifted
her ground, but treated it with equal felicity. Strange, but nature is
never so powerful as in insect life. The white ant can destroy fleets
and cities, and the locusts erase a province. And then, how beneficent
they are! Man would find it difficult to rival their exploits: the bee,
that gives us honey; the worm, that gives us silk; the cochineal, that
supplies our manufactures with their most brilliant dye.

Mr. Penruddock did not seem to know much about manufactures, but always
recommended his cottagers to keep bees.

"The lime-tree abounds in our village, and there is nothing the bees
love more than its blossoms."

This direct reference to his village led Mrs. Neuchatel to an inquiry as
to the state of the poor about Hurstley, and she made the inquiry in a
tone of commiseration.

"Oh! we do pretty well," said Mr. Penruddock.

"But how can a family live on ten or twelve shillings a week?" murmured
Mrs. Neuchatel.

"There it is," said Mr. Penruddock. "A family has more than that. With a
family the income proportionately increases."

Mrs. Neuchatel sighed. "I must say," she said, "I cannot help feeling
there is something wrong in our present arrangements. When I sit down
to dinner every day, with all these dishes, and remember that there are
millions who never taste meat, I cannot resist the conviction that it
would be better if there were some equal division, and all should have,
if not much, at least something."

"Nonsense, Emily!" said Mr. Neuchatel, who had an organ like Fine-ear,
and could catch, when necessary, his wife's most mystical revelations.
"My wife, Mr. Penruddock, is a regular Communist. I hope you are not,"
he added, with a smile, turning to Myra.

"I think life would be very insipid," replied Myra, "if all our lots
were the same."

When the ladies withdrew, Adriana and Myra walked out together
hand-in-hand. Mr. Neuchatel rose and sate next to Mr. Penruddock, and
began to talk politics. His reverend guest could not conceal his alarm
about the position of the C