These are great rivals--envious rivals--back-biting rivals; both, in the way of tale-bearing, what Autolicus calls himself, "pickers-up of unconsidered trifles." And truly, in the trade of this commodity, if in no other, this may be called a "manufacturing district." Now the Curate, unhappily, can buy his tea and sugar, and trifling matters, but of one--for to patronise both, would be to make enemies of both; the poor Curate, then, in preferring the adulterated goods of Nicolas Sandwell, to the adulterated goods of Matthew Miffins, has made an implacable enemy. Really, Eusebius, here is machinery enough for a heroic poem: for Virgil's old Lady Fame on the top of the roof we have three, active and lusty--and you may make them the Fates or the Furies, or what you please, except the Graces. Prateapace, Gadabout, and Brazenstare--there are characters enough for episodes; and a hero--but what, you will say, are we to do for a heroine? Here is one, beat out of the brain of Mathew Miffins, a ready-armed Minerva. You will smile, but it is so. The three above-named ladies first made their way to the shop of Mr Miffins, narrated what had passed and what had not. Having probably just completed "sanding the sugar and watering the tobacco," he raised both his hands and his eyes, and, to lose no time in business, dropped them as soon as he decently could, and, pressing both palms strongly on the counter, he asked, if they entertained any suspicion of a particular person as being the object of the Curate's most unbecoming passion? Lydia Prateapace remembered, certainly, a name being mentioned--it was Lesby or Lisby, or something like that. "Indeed!" said Miffins, arching his brows, and significantly touching the tip of his nose with his forefinger--"ah! indeed! a foreigner, depend upon it--a Lisbon lady; that, Miss, is the capital of Portugal, where them figs comes from. Only think, a foreign lady--a lady from Lisbon--that is too bad!" to which the three readily assented. "I doubt not, ladies," he continued, "it's one of them foreigners as lives near Ashford, about five miles off--where I knows the Curate goes two or three times in a week." Thus, Eusebius, is Catullus's Lesbia, who herself stood for another, converted into a Portuguese lady, whom the Curate visits some five miles off--or, as the three ladies say, _protects_.