But see, Captain Barnabas, fortified by his fourth cup of tea, has at length summoned courage to whisper to Mrs Hazeldean, "don't you think the Parson will be impatient for his rubber?" Mrs Hazeldean glanced at the Parson, and smiled; but she gave the signal to the Captain, and the bell was rung, lights were brought in, the curtains let down; in a few moments more the group had collected round the card-tables. The best of us are but human--that is not a new truth, I confess, but yet people forget it every day of their lives--and I dare say there are many who are charitably thinking at this very moment, that my Parson ought not to be playing at whist. All I can say to those rigid disciplinarians is, "Every man has his favourite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!--ladies and gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson, now-a-days, as a pattern parson--it is enough to have one pattern in a village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield has bespoken that place,--and got the patronage of the stocks for his emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but still at a time when churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they do now. The elderly parson of that day played his rubber as a matter of course, the middle-aged parson was sometimes seen riding to cover, (I knew a schoolmaster, a doctor of divinity, and an excellent man, whose pupils were chiefly taken from the highest families in England, who hunted regularly three times a-week during the season,) and the young parson would often sing a capital song--not composed by David--and join in those rotary dances, which certainly David never danced before the ark.