cher's meat in their heads but
onst a week, a-settin' theirselves up--"

"Now, Mrs. Eccles, you know perfectly well all the seats are free in the
evening."

"And so they may be, Miss Ruth, my dear--and don't ye be a-getting up
yet--and good Christians, I'm sure, the quality are to abide it. And it
did my heart good to hear the Honorable John preaching as he did in his
new surplice (as Widder Pegg always puts too much blue in the surplices
to my thinking), all about rich and poor, and one with another. A
beautiful sermon it was; but I wouldn't come up like they Harrises.
There's things as is suitable, and there's things as is not. No, I keep
to my own place; and I had to turn out old Bessie Pugh this very last
Sunday night, as I found a-cocked up there, tho' I was not a matter of
five minutes late. Bessie Pugh always was one to take upon herself, and,
as I often says to her, when I hear her a-goin' on about free grace and
the like, 'Bessie,' I says, 'if I was a widder on the parish, and not so
much as a pig to fat up for Christmas, and coming to church reg'lar on
Loaf Sunday, which it's not that I ain't sorry for ye, but _I_ wouldn't
take upon myself, if I was you, to talk of things as I'd better leave to
them as is beholden to nobody and pays their rent reg'lar. I've no
patience--But eh, dear Miss Ruth! look at that gentleman going down the
road, and the dog too. Why, ye haven't so much as got up! He's gone. He
was a foreigner, and no mistake. Why, good Lord! there he is coming back
again. He's seen me through the winder. Mercy on us! he's opening the
gate; he's coming to the door!"

As she spoke, a shadow passed before the window, and some one knocked.

Mrs. Eccles hastily thrust her darning-needle into the front of her
bodice, the general _rendezvous_ of the pins and needles of the
establishment, and proceeded to open the door and plant herself in front
of it.

Ruth caught a glimpse of an erect light gray figure in the sunshine,
surmounted by a brown face, and the lightest of light gray hats. Close
behind stood a black poodle of a dignified and self-engrossed
deportment, wearing its body half shaved, but breaking out in ruffles
round its paws, and a tuft at the end of a stiffly undemonstrative tail.

"The key of the church is kep' at Jones's, by the pump," said Mrs.
Eccles, in the brusque manner peculiar to the freeborn Briton when
brought in contact with a foreigner.

"Thank you, madam," was the reply, in the