Truelove, the grocer, is mayor?"

"Yes; one of the most impracticable men I ever encountered. One
can't get him so much as to understand anything. Now Briggs does
understand, only he goes by pounds s. d."

"Posterity has done nothing for me, and I will do nothing for
posterity, is his principle," said Julius. "Moreover, he is a
Baptist."

"No chance for the Church in his time," said Jenny.

"There's the less harm in that," said Raymond, "that the plan is
intolerable. Briggs's nephew took the plan of what he calls a
German Rat-house, for the town-hall, made in gilt gingerbread; and
then adapted the church to a beautiful similarity. If that could be
staved off by waiting for the bazaar, or by any other means, there
might be a chance of something better. So poor Fuller thinks,
though he is not man enough to speak out at once."

"Then the bazaar is really fixed?"

"So far as the resolution goes of the lady population, though Julius
is sanguine, and hopes to avert it. After all, I believe the
greatest obstructive to improvement is Moy."

"Old Mr. Proudfoot's son-in-law?" said Jenny. "I know he has
blossomed out in great splendour on our side of the county, and his
daughter is the general wonder. Papa is always declaring he will
set up in opposition to you."

"Not much fear of that," said Raymond. "But the man provokes me, he
has so much apparent seriousness."

"Even to the persecution of Dr. Easterby," put in Julius. "And yet
he is the great supporter of that abominable public-house in Water
Lane, the Three Pigeons--which, unluckily, escaped the fire. He
owns it, and all those miserable tenements beyond it, and nothing
will move him an inch towards doing any good there!"

"I remember," said Jenny, "papa came home very angry on the
licensing day; the police had complained of the Three Pigeons, and
the magistrates would have taken away the license, but that Mr. Moy
made such a personal matter of it."

"You don't mean that he is a magistrate!" exclaimed Julius.

"Yes," said Raymond. "He got the ear of the Lord-Lieutenant."

"And since he has lived at the Lawn, they have all quite set up for
county people or anything you please," said Jenny, a little
bitterly. "Mrs. Moy drives about with the most stylish pair of
ponies; and as to Miss Gussie, she is making herself into a proverb!
I can't bear them."

"Well done, Jenny!" exclaimed Julius.

"Perhaps it is wrong," said Jenny, in a low voice. "I da