use the weapons as
seems to me best."

Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members of
the family, dressed for church.

"It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs. Leslie. She
was never in time for any thing.

"Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door,
the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze--whirled up the stairs--gained
her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl
from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her
shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to conceal a
buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back like a
whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in waiting;
and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the shabby house
to the dilapidated church.

The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had
belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The
vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a
year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good
man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares
for wife and family, combined with what may be called _solitary
confinement_ for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
exchange an extra-parochial thought--had lulled him into a lazy
mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income
allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond
the example of his sinless life and such negative effect as might be
produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners
troubled him very little; and but for the influence which in hours of
Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable--that
is, the children and the aged--not half-a-dozen persons would have known
or cared whether he shut up his church or not.

But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr.
Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
learned to sin, croaked forth respon