itor's interest, to look into the resources
of the little world around us, and I find my efforts rewarded by the
prospect of a total blank.

Is there any presentable living soul in the neighborhood whom we can
invite to meet her? Not one. There are, as I have already said, no
country seats near us; and society in the county town has long since
learned to regard us as three misanthropes, strongly suspected, from
our monastic way of life and our dismal black costume, of being popish
priests in disguise. In other parts of England the clergyman of the
parish might help us out of our difficulty; but here in South Wales,
and in this latter half of the nineteenth century, we have the old type
parson of the days of Fielding still in a state of perfect preservation.
Our local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bear
comparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress, manners,
and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class of agricultural
laborer. When attempts have been made by well-meaning gentlefolks to
recognize the claims of his profession by asking him to their houses, he
has been known, on more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pair
of shoes in the hall, and enter the drawing-room respectfully in his
stockings. Where he preaches, miles and miles away from us and from the
poor cottage in which he lives, if he sees any of the company in the
squire's pew yawn or fidget in their places, he takes it as a hint that
they are tired of listening, and closes his sermon instantly at the end
of the sentence. Can we ask this most irreverend and unclerical of men
to meet a young lady? I doubt, even if we made the attempt, whether we
should succeed, by fair means, in getting him beyond the servants' hall.

Dismissing, therefore, all idea of inviting visitors to entertain our
guest, and feeling, at the same time, more than doubtful of her chance
of discovering any attraction in the sober society of the inmates of the
house, I finish my dressing and go down to breakfast, secretly veering
round to the housekeeper's opinion that Miss Jessie will really bring
matters to an abrupt conclusion by running away. I find Morgan as
bitterly resigned to his destiny as ever, and Owen so affectionately
anxious to make himself of some use, and so lamentably ignorant of how
to begin, that I am driven to disembarrass myself of him at the outset
by a stratagem.

I suggest to him that our visitor is sure to be inter