These last were scarcely the details which the Lowbar folk wanted to know. They wanted to know all about the _ménage_; in what style the newcomers lived; whether they kept much or any company; whether they agreed well together. This last was a point of special curiosity; for, in common with numberless other worthy, commonplace, stupid people, the Lowbar folk imagined that the private lives of "odd persons"--under which heading they included all professors of literature and art of any kind--were passed in dissipation and wrangling. How the information was to be obtained was the great point, for they knew that nothing would be extracted from the vicar, even if he had been brimful of remarks upon his new parishioners, which, indeed, he was not, as they neither of them happened to be at home when he called. It would be something to be well assured about their personal appearance, especially _her_ personal appearance; to see whether there were really any grounds for this boast of beauty which Dr. Brandram went talking about in such a ridiculous way. The church was the first happy hunting-ground pitched upon; and during the first Sunday after Geoff's and Margaret's arrival the excitement during divine service was intense; the worshippers in the middle and side aisles, whose pews all faced the pulpit, and whose backs were consequently turned to the entrance-door, regarding with intense envy their friends whose pews confronted each other between the pulpit and the altar, and who, consequently, while chanting the responses or listening to the lesson, could steal furtive glances on every occasion of the door's opening, without outraging propriety. But when it was found that the newcomers did not attend either morning or evening service,--and unquestionably a great many members of the congregation had their dinner of cold meat and salad (it was considered sinful in Lowbar to have hot dinners on Sunday) at an abnormally early hour for the purpose of attending evening service on the chance of seeing the new arrivals,--it was considered necessary to take more urgent measures; and so the little Misses Coverdale--two dried-up little chips of spinsters with corkscrew ringlets and black-lace mittens, who kept house for their brother, old Coverdale, the red-faced, white-headed proctor, Geoffrey's next-door neighbour--had quite a little gathering the next day, the supposed object of which was to take tea and walk in the garden, but the real object to peep furtively over the wall and try and catch a glimpse of her who was already sarcastically known as "Dr. Brandram's beauty." Some of the visitors, acquainted with the peculiarities of the garden, knowing what mound to stand on and what position to take up, were successful in catching a glimpse of the top of Margaret's hair--"all taken off her face like a schoolgirl's, and leaving her cheeks as bare as bare," as they afterwards reported--as she wandered listlessly round the