"That's right, go it, Harry!" cried the Squire, chuckling, and rubbing his hands as if he had been setting his terrier at the Parson: "St--St--at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?" "My dear ma'am," said the Parson, replying in preference to the lady, "there are many institutions in the country which are very old, look very decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down for all that." "You would reform them, then;" said Mrs Hazeldean, doubtfully, and with a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics now--that's your business." "No, I would not, ma'am;" said the Parson stoutly. "What on earth would you do, then?" quoth the Squire. "Just let 'em alone," said the Parson. "Master Frank, there's a Latin maxim which was often in the mouth of Sir Robert Walpole, and which they ought to put into the Eton grammar--'_Quieta non movere_.' If things are quiet, let them be quiet! I would not destroy the stocks, because that might seem to the ill-disposed like a license to offend, and I would not repair the stocks, because that puts it into people's heads to get into them." The Squire was a staunch politician of the old school, and he did not like to think that in repairing the stocks he had perhaps been conniving at revolutionary principles. "This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly mounting the more funereal of her two favourite hobbies, "is one of the great symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering, and mending, and reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may be destroyed!" The fair speaker paused, and-- Captain Barnabas said, thoughtfully--"Twenty years!--the insurance offices rarely compute the best life at more than fourteen." He struck his hand on the stocks as he spoke, and added with his usual consolatory conclusion:--"The odds are, that it will last our time, Squire." But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world, he did not clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to inquire. "Sir," said Master Frank, to his father, with that furtive spirit of quizzing, which he had acquired amongst other polite accomplishments at Eton.--"Sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get to put into them." "True," said the Squire, with much gravity. "Yes, there it is!" said the Parson, mournfully. "If you would but learn '_non quieta movere_!'" "Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson!" cried the Squire, angrily; "I can give you as good as you bring any day. "'Propria quæ maribus tri buuntur mascula dicas.-- As in præsenti, perfectum format in avi.'"