do to do;
and there she is, sitting with her pen behind her ear, waiting for
something to write. I am come to find her my mother's letters, for I
should like to have a fair copy made of them. O, here they are: don't
trouble yourself, my dear child."

When my lady returned again, she sat down and began to talk of Mr. Gray.

"Miss Galindo says she saw him going to hold a prayer-meeting in a
cottage. Now that really makes me unhappy, it is so like what Mr. Wesley
used to do in my younger days; and since then we have had rebellion in
the American colonies and the French Revolution. You may depend upon it,
my dear, making religion and education common--vulgarising them, as it
were--is a bad thing for a nation. A man who hears prayers read in the
cottage where he has just supped on bread and bacon, forgets the respect
due to a church: he begins to think that one place is as good as another,
and, by-and-by, that one person is as good as another; and after that, I
always find that people begin to talk of their rights, instead of
thinking of their duties. I wish Mr. Gray had been more tractable, and
had left well alone. What do you think I heard this morning? Why that
the Home Hill estate, which niches into the Hanbury property, was bought
by a Baptist baker from Birmingham!"

"A Baptist baker!" I exclaimed. I had never seen a Dissenter, to my
knowledge; but, having always heard them spoken of with horror, I looked
upon them almost as if they were rhinoceroses. I wanted to see a live
Dissenter, I believe, and yet I wished it were over. I was almost
surprised when I heard that any of them were engaged in such peaceful
occupations as baking.

"Yes! so Mr. Horner tells me. A Mr. Lambe, I believe. But, at any rate,
he is a Baptist, and has been in trade. What with his schismatism and
Mr. Gray's methodism, I am afraid all the primitive character of this
place will vanish."

From what I could hear, Mr. Gray seemed to be taking his own way; at any
rate, more than he had done when he first came to the village, when his
natural timidity had made him defer to my lady, and seek her consent and
sanction before embarking in any new plan. But newness was a quality
Lady Ludlow especially disliked. Even in the fashions of dress and
furniture, she clung to the old, to the modes which had prevailed when
she was young; and though she had a deep personal regard for Queen
Charlotte (to whom, as I have already said, she had been