“Next door [to the house under repair],” continues Miss Mitford, “lives a carpenter, famed ten miles round, and worthy all his fame, with his excellent wife and their little daughter Lizzie, the plaything and queen of the village, a child of three years old, according to the register, but six in size and strength and intellect, in power and in self-will. She manages everybody in the place, her schoolmistress included ... makes the lazy carry her, the silent talk to her, the grave romp with her; does anything she pleases; is absolutely irresistible.... Together with a good deal of the character of Napoleon she has something of his square, sturdy, upright form ... she has the imperial attitudes too, and loves to stand with her hands behind her, or folded over her breast, and sometimes when she has a little touch of shyness she clasps them together on the top of her head, pressing down her shining curls, and looking so exquisitely pretty! Yes, Lizzie is the queen of the village! She has but one rival in her dominions, a certain white greyhound called Mayflower, much her friend, who resembles her in beauty and strength, in playfulness and almost in sagacity, and reigns over the animal world as she over the human. They are both coming with me, Lizzie and Lizzie’s ‘pretty May.’ “We are now at the end of the street; a cross lane, a rope walk, shaded with limes and oaks, and a cool, clear pond, overhung with elms, lead us to the bottom of the hill. There is still an house round the corner, ending in a picturesque wheeler’s shop. The dwelling-house is more ambitious. Look at the fine flowered window-blinds, the green door with the brass knocker.... These are the curate’s lodgings—apartments his landlady would call them. He lives with his own family four miles off, but once or twice a week he comes to his neat little parlour to write sermons, to marry or to bury as the case may require. Never were better people than his host and hostess, and there is a reflection of clerical importance about them, since their connection with the Church, which is quite edifying—a decorum, a gravity, a solemn politeness. Oh, to see the worthy wheeler carry the gown after his lodger on a Sunday, nicely pinned up in his wife’s best handkerchief; or to hear him rebuke a squalling child or a squabbling woman! The curate is nothing to him. He is fit to be perpetual churchwarden.”