"Look here," said Tom Morrison, stoutly, "who are you and yours that they are not to be spoken to? How long is it since a respectable girl couldn't hardly walk along one of our lanes for fear of being insulted by the parson's sons? I tell you--" "Tom! Tom!" moaned Polly, "I--I--" "Hush, bairn!" he whispered, and Frank hustled his brother out of the cottage, angrily threatening punishment to the brothers Morrison before many days were over their heads, and went back to the rectory, where Mr Perry-Morton informed Lord Artingale, in confidence, that he would have liked to delete such creatures as that ruffian. They were only blurs, spots, and blemishes upon the face of this beautiful earth, marring its serenity, and stealing space that was the inheritance of those who could appreciate the gift. "I can handle my fists," said Artingale, in reply, "for we had a good fellow to teach us, and nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have had ten minutes' interview with that blackguard." "It is very brave and bold of you," said Mr Perry-Morton, holding his too fleshy head up with one white hand, as it drooped sidewise, and supporting his elbow with another white hand, as he gazed at him with a kindly, patronising, smiling pity, "but it would be better to hand him over to the police." "Oh, the police might have had him when I had done with him," said the young man, nodding. "I should have liked to have had my bit of satisfaction first." The sisters, that is to say, Mr Perry-Morton's sisters, wound their arms round each other, the elder laying her head upon her sister's shoulder, so that arms, hair, and dresses were intertwined and mingled into a graceful whole. Doubtless their legs would have been woven into the figure, only they were required to stand on; and then with a series of changes passing over their faces with beautiful regularity, and with wonderful gradations by minor tones or tints, they suggested horror, fear, dread, suffering, pity, pain, with a grand finale representing wakeful repose, as they listened to Cynthia's history of the encounter, while their brother, after gazing at them diagonally through his eyelashes, softly crossed the room, touched the Rector upon the arm, and pointed to the sisterly group with a smile of satisfied affection. "Heaven has its reflections upon earth," he said softly, "and the poetic mind reads rapture in angelic form," he added, with a fat smile of serene satisfaction and repose. "Quite so," said the Rector, and he balanced his double eyeglass upon his nose; "but really, Mr Perry-Morton, I have so many troubles and petty cares upon my mind, that this new one has filled me with indignation, and I hardly know what I say or do. Whether as clergyman or county magistrate, I am sure no one could be so troubled as I have been."