talk, which dribbled placidly out of her lips
whenever it was called for, always in the
same quantity, and always of the same
quality, at every hour in the day, and through
every change in the seasons. Miss Sturch
never laughed, and never cried, but took the
safe middle course of smiling perpetually.
She smiled when she came down on a morning
in January, and said it was very cold.
She smiled when she came down on a morning
in July, and said it was very hot. She
smiled when the bishop came once a-year to
see the vicar; she smiled when the butcher's
boy came every morning for orders. She
smiled when Miss Louisa wept on her bosom,
and implored indulgence towards errors in
geography; she smiled when Master Robert
jumped into her lap and ordered her to brush
his hair. Let what might happen at the
vicarage, nothing ever jerked Miss Sturch
out of the one smooth groove in which she
ran perpetually, always at the same pace. If
she had lived in a royalist family, during the
civil wars in England, she would have rung
for the cook, to order dinner, on the morning
of the execution of Charles the First. If
Shakespeare had come back to life again, and
had called at the vicarage at six o'clock on
Saturday evening, to explain to Miss Sturch
exactly what his views were in composing
the tragedy of Hamlet, she would have smiled
and said it was extremely interesting, until
the striking of seven o'clock; at which time
she would have begged the Bard of Avon to
excuse her, and would have left him in the
middle of a sentence, to superintend the
housemaid in the verification of the washing
book. A very estimable young person, Miss
Sturch (as the ladies of Long Beckley were
accustomed to say); so judicious with the
children, and so attached to her household
duties; such a well-regulated mind, and such
a crisp touch on the piano; just nice-looking
enough, just well-dressed enough, just talkative
enough; not quite old enough, perhaps,
and a little too much inclined to be embraceably
plump about the region of the waist—
but, on the whole, a very estimable young
person,—very much so, indeed.

On the characteristic peculiarities of Miss
Sturch's pupils, it is not necessary to dwell
at very great length. Miss Louisa's habitual
weakness was an inveterate tendency to
catch cold. Miss Amelia's principal defect
was a disposition to gratify her palate by eating
supplementary dinners and breakfasts at
unauthorised times and seasons. Master
Robert's most noticeable failings were caused
by alacrity in tearing his clothes, and
obtuseness in learning the Multiplication
Table. The virtues of all three were of
much the same nature—they were well
grown, they were genuine children, and they
were boisterously fond of Miss Sturch.

To complete the gallery of family portraits,
an outline, at the least, must be attempted of
the vicar himself. Dr. Chennery was, in a
physical point of view, a credit to the
Establishment to which he was attached. He
stood six feet two in his shooting shoes; he
weighed seventeen stone; he was the best
bowler in the Long Beckley cricket-club; he
was a strictly orthodox man in the matter of
wine and mutton; he never started disagreeable
theories about people's future destinies
in the pulpit, never quarrelled with anybody
out of the pulpit, never buttoned up his
pockets when the necessities of his poor
brethren (dissenters included) pleaded with
him to open them. His course through the
world was a steady march along the high
and dry middle of a safe turnpike-road. The
serpentine side-paths of controversy might
open as alluringly as they pleased on his
right hand and on his left, but he kept on
his way sturdily, and never regarded them.
Innovating young recruits in the Church army
might entrappingly open the Thirty-nine
Articles under his very nose, but the veteran's
wary eye never looked a hair's-breadth
further than his own signature at the bottom
of them. He knew as little as possible of theology,
he had never given the Privy Council a
minute's trouble in the whole course of his life,
he was innocent of all meddling with the reading
or writing of pamphlets, and he was quite
incapable of finding his way to the platform
of Exeter Hall. In short, he was the most
unclerical of clergymen—but, for all that, he
had such a figure for a surplice as is seldom
seen. Seventeen stone weight of upright
muscular fiesh, without an angry spot or a
sore place in any part of it, has the merit of
suggesting stability, at any rate,—an excellent
virtue in pillars of all kinds, but an
especially precious quality, at the present
time, in a pillar of the Church.

As soon as the vicar entered the breakfast-
parlour, the children assailed him with a
chorus of shouts. He was a severe disciplinarian
in the observance of punctuality at
meal times; and he now stood convicted by
the clock of being too late for breakfast by
a quarter of an hour.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss
Sturch," said the vicar; " but I have a good
excuse for being late this morning."

"Pray don't mention it, sir," said Miss
Sturch, blandly rubbing her plump little
hands one over the other. "A beautiful
morning. I fear we shall have another warm
day. Robert, my love, your elbow is on the
table. A beautiful morning—a beautiful
morning, indeed!"

"Stomach still out of order—eh, Phippen?"
asked the vicar, beginning to carve
the ham.

Mr. Phippen shook his large head dolefully,
placed his yellow forefinger, ornamented with
a large turquoise ring, on the centre check of
his light green summer waistcoat—looked
piteously at Doctor Chennery, and sighed—
removed the finger, and produced from the
breast-pocket of his wrapper a little mahogany