Mrs. Cribbage was an indefatigable parish visitor. She worked the parish with the most conscientious ardour, considering a week lost unless she had visited every house in it and had dispensed a few pious scriptural remarks, and picked up a pinch of gossip in each. She knew everything about every one in the place, and retailed what she knew, especially if it were too unpleasant to retain. She did not give out much scandal in the cottages, but she pecked here and there after grains of information, and swallowed what she found. And the people, well aware of her liking, with that courtesy and readiness to oblige which characterises the English lower orders, brought out and strewed before her all the nasty, and ill-natured, and suspicious scraps of information they had hoarded in their houses. Mrs. Cribbage carried away whatever she learned, and communicated it to her acquaintances in a circle superior to that where she gathered it, to the Macduffs, to the wives of the neighbouring parsons, to the curate, with caution to Lady Lamerton. She acted as a turbine wheel that forces water up from a low level to houses on a height. She thus impelled a current of tittle-tattle from the deep places of society to those who lived above; but in this particular she differed from the turbine, that forces up clean water, whereas, what Mrs. Cribbage pumped up was usually the reverse. Mrs. Cribbage was nettled by Arminell’s uncourteous tone, and said: “What charming weather we have been having. I hope, Miss Inglett, that you enjoyed your Sunday morning walk?” “It was as delightful as the weather,” answered Arminell, well aware that there were claws in the velvet paw that stroked her. “Would you wish to know where I went?” “O, my dear Miss Inglett! I know.” Then Mrs. Cribbage left, and when she was gone, Lady Lamerton said gently, “You were too curt with that woman, dear. You should never forget your manners, never be rude to a visitor in your own house.” “I am not an adept at concealment, as are others.” “The best screen against such a person is politeness.” “She is like a snail, with eyes that she stretches forth to all parts of the parish. I hate her.” “Arminell, your father has been putting prickly wire about on fences where cattle or pigs force their way. The beasts scratch themselves against the spikes, and after one or two experiences, learn to keep within bounds, and lose the desire to transgress. The Mrs. Cribbages—and there are yards of them—are the spiky wires of society, hedging us about, and keeping us in our proper places, odious in themselves, but useful, and a protection to us against ourselves.” “Barbed or unbarbed, I would break through them.”