Our worthy curate was a married man, but he had no family; and that circumstance gave him abundant opportunity to interest himself about the affairs of all the town. Mrs. Denver assisted him greatly in this public and universal sympathy. Mrs. Denver was said to be a very intelligent woman, and had enjoyed that reputation for many years. Her maiden name was Smith--no relation to old Richard Smith; and she had borne that name so long, that she was tired of it, regarding it as Archbishop Tillotson did the Athanasian Creed, wishing that she “was well rid of it.” Many people thought that Mr. Denver married her from a motive of pure good nature, because nobody else was likely to marry her. She was of high family “originally,” as she used to say; being descended from the Simsons of Devonshire, one of whom was knighted by Richard the Third; and she was very particular in stating that her ancestors did not spell the name with p, for that was an innovation, and it was a very inferior family that was called Simpson. All the gossip of the town and neighbourhood flowed to the parsonage as a centre, and again flowed from it as from a perennial and exhaustless fountain. In justice to the worthy curate it must be stated, that so far as he was concerned, there was nothing of censoriousness blended with his collecting and communicating disposition: he was happy to hear intelligence, and pleased to spread it; but he never pronounced an opinion as to the propriety or impropriety of the matters of which he heard and of which he spoke. It was not exactly so with Mrs. Denver; her candour was not equal to that of her husband: not that she was at all censorious, very far from it; but she could not help, as she said, feeling indignant at the vices and wickednesses which abounded in the world; and she was certainly not to be blamed for what she could not help. Sometimes she would even be angry with her husband on account of the placidity of his temper; and she would even acknowledge that she could have no patience with the abominations of the age. It must be also added, that Mrs. Denver was not quite equal to her husband in the virtue of liberality towards sectarians. She had been brought up as a member of the church established by law, and she could not see how it was possible that any other religion should be true; and for her part, she was fully determined not to countenance any false religion. It was rather unfortunate for the poor woman, that, with the exception of the Martindales, the principal people at Brigland were dissenters; and so there were two or three drawing-rooms from which her orthodoxy would have excluded her, but to which her love of the good things of life attracted her. Mrs. Denver was decidedly loyal: her reverence for majesty was unbounded. She was so grateful to Richard the Third for having knighted one of the Simsons, that she thought she could never say enough in favour of royalty.