We prefer to enter the residence of the parson, and, seated opposite to his rosy countenance, note a few observations as to what was passing there. In a parenthesis, we have already described the worthy man as fat and oily. Indeed, he was singularly consistent, for whilst he preached _good living_ to others, he did not neglect to practice it himself, though, perhaps, he had a private interpretation of the word, and understood it in a different sense. He told his hearers that they would, in the end, feel the advantages resulting from it: and certainly, after fifty years practice, he looked very comfortable himself. This regimen had endowed him with size and colour, flesh and paint. He had been called a light of the church; only, we presume, because his face, in shape, resembled the moon, though scarcely so pale. Yet, withall, Dr. Mauncel was mild and benevolent, and one of his best properties was, that he had a beautiful daughter, who had just reached her nineteenth winter. Many a sigh had been unconsciously breathed as Mary leant upon her father’s arm, on their way to church: and as she knelt in prayer, many a look had been directed towards her, and lovers envied the vicar for the many caresses he must receive from such a fair being, and thought what a sanctuary her presence would make of the very humblest home. The little arch creature knew this, and flung back her ringlets, that her face might be seen, and then contrived to make it so demure and grave, that one might have imagined that a ray of happy, but feverish love, had never brightened over it. When she smiled, it was always so friendly, that a deeper sentiment, it was thought, could not lurk beneath it; and she would extend her hand so frankly, that no one could venture upon retaining and kissing it,--it felt so sisterly. And yet, the sweet rogue was in love with her cousin William, then residing at the Vicarage; and when the good doctor was paying his addresses either to his meals or his sermon, the young pair were toying with each other’s hands, and his reverence had once been startled from his reveries, by a very loud kiss. We have, strangely enough, omitted to mention that it was Christmas night on which all the transactions we have recorded of the tailors, took place; so that lights were still seen in the vicarage, and a goose, with others of the same genus, was standing on the table very peaceably, if we except the smoke of their anger, which was ascending, and, as the vicar facetiously remarked, much more comfortable where they were, than without, in the fury of the storm. “Is all in readiness? Now, nephew, you can fence and carve, bisect and dissect; but when you reach my age, you will only be able to devour, decant, or digest. Stay; Mary, bring Rehoboam and Jeroboam, with all their tribes. Rehoboam was the son of Solomon, and there is no reason why a wise man should not be fond of him. Come, haste, Mary, else I shall send William to bring you.”