maid-of-honour),
yet there was a tinge of Jacobitism about her, such as made her extremely
dislike to hear Prince Charles Edward called the young Pretender, as many
loyal people did in those days, and made her fond of telling of the thorn-
tree in my lord's park in Scotland, which had been planted by bonny Queen
Mary herself, and before which every guest in the Castle of Monkshaven
was expected to stand bare-headed, out of respect to the memory and
misfortunes of the royal planter.

We might play at cards, if we so chose, on a Sunday; at least, I suppose
we might, for my lady and Mr. Mountford used to do so often when I first
went. But we must neither play cards, nor read, nor sew on the fifth of
November and on the thirtieth of January, but must go to church, and
meditate all the rest of the day--and very hard work meditating was. I
would far rather have scoured a room. That was the reason, I suppose,
why a passive life was seen to be better discipline for me than an active
one.

But I am wandering away from my lady, and her dislike to all innovation.
Now, it seemed to me, as far as I heard, that Mr. Gray was full of
nothing but new things, and that what he first did was to attack all our
established institutions, both in the village and the parish, and also in
the nation. To be sure, I heard of his ways of going on principally from
Miss Galindo, who was apt to speak more strongly than accurately.

"There he goes," she said, "clucking up the children just like an old
hen, and trying to teach them about their salvation and their souls, and
I don't know what--things that it is just blasphemy to speak about out of
church. And he potters old people about reading their Bibles. I am sure
I don't want to speak disrespectfully about the Holy Scriptures, but I
found old Job Horton busy reading his Bible yesterday. Says I, 'What are
you reading, and where did you get it, and who gave it you?' So he made
answer, 'That he was reading Susannah and the Elders, for that he had
read Bel and the Dragon till he could pretty near say it off by heart,
and they were two as pretty stories as ever he had read, and that it was
a caution to him what bad old chaps there were in the world.' Now, as
Job is bed-ridden, I don't think he is likely to meet with the Elders,
and I say that I think repeating his Creed, the Commandments, and the
Lord's Prayer, and, maybe, throwing in a verse of the Psalms, if he
wanted a bit of a change, would