“Beg pardon, sir, but I must speak as I find; and Minister Holman—we call the Church clergyman here ‘parson,’ sir; he would be a bit jealous if he heard a Dissenter called parson—Minister Holman knows what he’s about as well as e’er a farmer in the neighbourhood. He gives up five days a week to his own work, and two to the Lord’s; and it is difficult to say which he works hardest at. He spends Saturday and Sunday a-writing sermons and a-visiting his flock at Hornby; and at five o“clock on Monday morning he’ll be guiding his plough in the Hope Farm yonder just as well as if he could neither read nor write. But your dinner will be getting cold, gentlemen.” So we went back to table. After a while, Mr Holdsworth broke the silence:—“If I were you, Manning, I’d look up these relations of yours. You can go and see what they’re like while we’re waiting for Dobson’s estimates, and I’ll smoke a cigar in the garden meanwhile.” “Thank you, sir. But I don’t know them, and I don’t think I want to know them.” “What did you ask all those questions for, then?” said he, looking quickly up at me. He had no notion of doing or saying things without a purpose. I did not answer, so he continued,—“Make up your mind, and go off and see what this farmer-minister is like, and come back and tell me—I should like to hear.” I was so in the habit of yielding to his authority, or influence, that I never thought of resisting, but went on my errand, though I remember feeling as if I would rather have had my head cut off. The landlord, who had evidently taken an interest in the event of our discussion in a way that country landlords have, accompanied me to the house-door, and gave me repeated directions, as if I was likely to miss my way in two hundred yards. But I listened to him, for I was glad of the delay, to screw up my courage for the effort of facing unknown people and introducing myself. I went along the lane, I recollect, switching at all the taller roadside weeds, till, after a turn or two, I found myself close in front of the Hope Farm. There was a garden between the house and the shady, grassy lane; I afterwards found that this garden was called the court; perhaps because there was a low wall round it, with an iron railing on the top of the wall, and two great gates between pillars crowned with stone balls for a state entrance to the flagged path leading up to the front door. It was not the habit of the place to go in either by these great gates or by the front door; the gates, indeed, were locked, as I found, though the door stood wide open. I had to go round by a side-path lightly worn on a broad grassy way, which led past the court-wall, past a horse-mount, half covered with stone-crop and the little wild yellow fumitory, to another door—“the curate”, as I found it was termed by the master of the house, while the front door, “handsome and all for show”, was termed the “rector”. I knocked with my hand upon the “curate” door; a tall girl,