_MR. MORLAND and the local clergyman are chatting importantly about some matter of no importance, while MRS. MORLAND is on her sofa at the other side of the room, coming into the conversation occasionally with a cough or a click of her needles, which is her clandestine way of telling her husband not to be so assertive to his guest. They are all middle-aged people who have found life to be on the whole an easy and happy adventure, and have done their tranquil best to make it so for their neighbours. The squire is lean, the clergyman of full habit, but could you enter into them you would have difficulty in deciding which was clergyman and which was squire; both can be peppery, the same pepper. They are benignant creatures, but could exchange benignancies without altering. MRS. MORLAND knows everything about her husband except that she does nearly all his work for him. She really does not know this. His work, though he rises early to be at it, is not much larger than a lady’s handkerchief, and consists of magisterial duties, with now and then an impressive scene about a tenant’s cowshed. She then makes up his mind for him, and is still unaware that she is doing it. He has so often heard her say (believing it, too) that he is difficult to move when once he puts his foot down that he accepts himself modestly as a man of this character, and never tries to remember when it was that he last put down his foot. In the odd talks which the happily married sometimes hold about the future he always hopes he will be taken first, being the managing one, and she says little beyond pressing his hand, but privately she has decided that there must be another arrangement. Probably life at the vicarage is on not dissimilar lines, but we cannot tell as we never meet MR. AMY’S wife. MR. AMY is even more sociable than MR. MORLAND; he is reputed to know every one in the county, and has several times fallen off his horse because he will salute all passers-by. On his visits to London he usually returns depressed because there are so many people in the streets to whom he may not give a friendly bow. He likes to read a book if he knows the residence or a relative of the author, and at the play it is far more to him to learn that the actress has three children, one of them down with measles, than to follow her histrionic genius. He and his host have the pleasant habit of print-collecting, and a very common scene between them is that which now follows. They are bent over the squire’s latest purchase._) MR. AMY. Very interesting. A nice little lot. I must say, James, you have the collector’s flair. MR. MORLAND. Oh, well, I’m keen, you know, and when I run up to London I can’t resist going a bust in my small way. I picked these up quite cheap. MR. AMY. The flair. That is what you have. MR. MORLAND. Oh, I don’t know.