Mrs. Thwaytes listened and sighed. The subject on which her ally had touched was not one that could be pursued without due thought and deliberation. As yet, though well aware that a mean maternal jealousy had begot something very like hatred to Honor in Mrs. Beacham’s breast, the widow did not feel by any means thoroughly assured that she could safely touch upon the _impropriety_ of Mr. Vavasour’s intimacy with John’s young wife. The old lady had not, in that quiet busy home of hers, marched even ever so laggingly with the times. In a groove, her mind was that of the right woman in the right place. She had never, in the course of a long life, striven to throw off a prejudice, or struggled to free herself from the trammels of a preconceived and stolidly retained idea. To the simple (may I be pardoned for calling it the _pure_?) mind of the farmer’s widow crime _was_ crime, and had never been softened by a _petit nom_. On the second of those two tables of stone, at which, for nearly forty years, she had looked reverently from her pew, there were certain Commandments which she (in common with many of the young, who say their Catechism, and are taught to fear God) believed, as regarded herself and her belongings, to be futile and useless ordinances. “Thou shalt not steal;” “Thou shalt do no murder;” “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” It was right, of course, that the injunctions should be there; but what had she or hers, or, indeed, any respectable members of the community, to do with wickedness so horrible? Mrs. Beacham was neither a newspaper reader, a novel lover, nor a dissecter of human character and motives. Of the degrees of crime, of relative amount of guilt (temptation and temperament being taken into account), she was as ignorant as poor Joe Griggs, the village idiot; and this being so, her companion having withal sufficient shrewdness to comprehend the same, that worthy gossipmonger hesitated slightly, and took time to choose her words, before she startled Mrs. Beacham with the news of what the Switcham folks might, could, or did say about John’s pretty wife. She had laughed significantly--for a woman who could not be called ill-natured, it was not a pleasant laugh--as Honor rode away. That young lady had been more than usually “’aughty, the saucy thing!” Mrs. Thwaytes had told herself that afternoon, and she did not feel at all inclined to spare her any of the consequences of her misdeeds. “She’s a pretty creature, is Mrs. John,” she said, with a commiserating sigh, as the two congenial spirits resumed their places (they had been, as I said, watching Honor “mount” from the window) at the tea-table; “a sweet pretty creature, and so I always said. It’s a pity she’s so thoughtless, though it’s the way, as one may say, with young folks. We should remember that we was young once ourselves, and not be hard upon them as is like the little bears with all their troubles afore them.”