Pringle suffered in more ways than one. He had to walk now through the parish in discharging his parochial duties, for he could no more "prance about," as Mrs Hartshorne called it, on his dapple grey pony. The campaigner had impounded that valuable little animal, and no more was it bestridden by the well shaped, albeit diminutive legs of the incumbent. The Macchiaevelli in petticoats said that "her daughter" must have a carriage to go about in, considering she could no longer afford to keep one of her own, which otherwise she would have been happy for Laura to have made free use of. The campaigner had sold her equipage when she cleared out from Laburnum Cottage along with other sundry theatrical "effects" which she had kept up for the sales of entrapping suitors for her daughters' hands, and now they were both off her hands she melted down her appurtenances into the handier form of a banker's balance. "No one knew what might come," as she said to herself, sagely reflective. She accordingly made Pringle buy a neat basket carriage, and build an enlargement to the parsonage stable for its accommodation. To this vehicle, dapple grey was thenceforth attached, and the campaigner used to drive out in it every afternoon, occasionally but seldom, accompanied by her daughter, and the small boy with the eruption of buttons on him, whom she had retained in her own service when she migrated to the house of her son-in-law. "It was so respectable to have a page," as she said. Lizzie she never invited to drive with her, not that she would for a moment have consented to the penance of a _tete-a-tete_ with the campaigner, whom she disliked as much almost as the other did her, although she tried to bear with her for her brother's sake, whom she pitied. Lizzie in fact saw clearly that poor Herbert was sadly hen-pecked, not by his wife, for she was two apathetic, but by his mother-in-law. Instead of the paradise of bliss which he had hoped to enter, by allying himself with Lady Inskip's eldest daughter, the young incumbent found himself in a very miserable position; and I am inclined to think that he somewhat regretted his hasty step. He loved Laura as much as it was in his nature to do so, and so did she him; but both were very young--he just a boy from College, one might say; and they had yet much to learn of that mutual forbearance principle, and earnest trust and love, without which too many find marriage the "lottery" they declare it. What chance of happiness they had depended upon their being to themselves, without the odious presence of the campaigner; but she had established herself as a fixture, and was not going to stir herself in a hurry; and as Laura as yet took her part, principally because Herbert Pringle had his sister on his side, the pecktive state continued, unhappily for all parties.