Alice looked at the borders, and thought it would be a prodigious condescension. The sight of the rusty shears, however, subdued her pride; and as soon as Mrs. Byrne’s coarsest blue apron could be tied over the young lady’s frock, she was down on her knees, clipping and hacking at the dry grass, and severing as much as a handful in a quarter of an hour. She actually forgot her new property of eggs till Byrne came home to dinner, and startled her with his gruff voice, while she was trying to clip a bunch which was too obstinate for her shears. She looked up, vexed at being interrupted, but sufficiently exhausted to be in need of her dinner; and no vexation could withstand the news that three little partridges were huddling together and tumbling over one another in the basket. No vexation of hers could withstand this news. Byrne’s was too highly wrought to be conquered so easily. He came home in a most terrible temper indeed. His wife was aghast when she heard how he abused Peterson, the church, and even the vicar himself, before Alice. Peterson had come down to the rectory to demand tithe of the mown grass, which Mr. Mackintosh had contemptuously refused, on the ground of there being no claim. Mr. Mackintosh had said that while the church had taken care that every other party should pay to the church, it had also taken care of itself, and had decreed that the church should not pay to the church. The parson might not pay to the vicar, or the vicar to the parson. Much as he hated the church, therefore, he was now sheltered under its wings; and not a blade of rectory grass should the vicar touch.—Well; what answer did Peterson make? Why; it was the most provoking thing in the world; he had his law-book in his pocket, (as he seemed always to have,) and he showed that in the case of a vicar being specially endowed, (as Mr. Hellyer was,) small tithes, and even hay, might be levied upon the impropriator’s ground, as well as other people’s. Mr. Mackintosh said some very sound, good things, Byrne thought, when he found he really was liable. He said he thought it would be no more than fair to leave people to choose whether they would have a religion or not; and that they might as well demand from him his meat and drink to maintain Punch in a puppet-show——