Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp were by no means the only persons in Beachborough to whom Mrs. Stothard's position in the household at the Tower afforded subject-matter for gossip. It may be safely asserted that there never was a tea-drinking, followed--as was usually the case among the better classes in that hospitable neighbourhood--by a consumption of alcohol "hot with," at which Mrs. Stothard was not served up as a toothsome morsel, and forthwith torn into shreds, if not by the teeth, at least by the tongues of the assembled company. To those simple minds, all social standing was fixed and unalterable--one must either be mistress or servant; the lines of demarcation were strongly defined; they knew of no softening gradations; and they could not understand Mrs. Stothard. "She hev' her dinner by herself, and her own teapot allays brought to her own room--leastways, 'cept when she do fetch it herself, Miss Annette bein' sleepy or out of sorts, and not likin' to be disturbed by the servants." Such was the report which Nancy Wickstead, who had gone to live as nursemaid up at the Tower soon after the arrival of the family, brought down about this redoubtable woman. The villagers only knew her by report, by crumbs and fragments of rumours dropped by Nancy Wickstead when she came down among her old familiars for an "evening out," or by the tradesmen who called at the house, and who drew largely on their own imagination for the stories which they told. They had only caught fleeting glimpses of Mrs. Stothard as she passed along the corridor or crossed from room to room, but even those cursory glances entitled them to swagger before their fellow-villagers who had never seen her at all--never. Many of them tried to think they had, and after renewed descriptions of her firmly believed that they had; but it was all an exercitation of their imagination, for they never went to the Tower, and Mrs. Stothard never left it--never, under any pretence. In the two years during which the family had resided at the Tower, Mrs. Stothard had never passed through the entrance-gate. She took exercise sometimes in the grounds; even that but rarely; but she never left them. Young Dobbs, the grocer, a bright spirit, once took it into his head to chaff about her with the servants, to ask who was the "female hermit," and what duties she performed in the house; a flight of fancy not very humorous in itself, and unfortunate in its result. The next day Mrs. Derinzy called on Dobbs senior, asked him for his bill, paid it, and removed the family custom to Sandwith of Bedminster.