Hillary Nanspian was spoken to on the subject, and he opined that the dinner must be held. ’If Taverner Langford is ashamed to meet me, let him stay away. I shall pay him every penny I owed, and can look him in the face. We shall be merrier without him.’ Notice of the dinner was sent to Langford; he made no reply, but from his manner it was concluded that he would not attend. The day of the Trust dinner arrived. Geese had been killed. Whiff! they could be smelt all down the village to leeward of the inn, and widows came out and sniffed up all they were likely to receive of Coryndon’s Charity. Beef was being roasted. Hah! The eye that peeped into the kitchen saw it turning and browning before the great wood fire, and when the landlord’s wife was not talking, the ear heard the frizzle of the fat and the drop, drop into the pan beneath. What was that clinking? Men’s hearts danced at the sound. A row of tumblers was placed on the dresser, and spoons set in them. In the dairy a maid was taking cream, golden as the buttercup, off the pans to be eaten—believe it, non-Devonians, if you can, gnash your teeth with envy and tear your hair—to be eaten with plum-pudding. See! yonder stands a glass vessel containing nutty-white celery in it, the leaves at the top not unfolded, not green, but of the colour of pale butter. Hard by is a plate with squares of cheese on it, hard by indeed, for, oh—what a falling off is there!—the Devon cheese is like board. About the door of the ’Ring of Bells’ was assembled a knot of men in their Sunday best, with glossy, soaped faces. They were discussing the quarrel between the brothers-in-law when the Rector arrived. He was a bland man, with a face like a suet-pudding; he shook hands cordially with every one. ’We’ve been talking, Parson, about the two who have got across. ’Tis a pity now, is it not?’ Parson Robbins looked from one to another, to gather the prevailing opinion, before he committed himself. Then, seeing one shake his head, and hearing another say, ’It’s a bad job,’ he ventured to say, ’Well, it may be so considered.’ He was too cautious a man to say ’I consider it so;’ he could always edge out of an ’It may be so considered.’ Parson Robbins was the most inoffensive of men. He never, in the pulpit, insisted on a duty lest he should offend a Churchman, nor on a doctrine lest he should shock a Dissenter. It was his highest ambition to stand well with all men, and he endeavoured to gain his point by disagreeing with nobody and insisting on nothing. ’I hear,’ said Farmer Yelland, ’that the two never meet each other and never speak. They are waiting a chance of flying at each other’s throats.’ ’Ah!’ observed the Rector, ’so it has been reported in the parish.’ He was too careful to say ’reported to _me_.’ ’Why, pity on us!’ said a little cattle-jobber with a squint; ’when folks who look straight before them fall across, how am I to keep straight with my eyes askew?’