"Tourtelot!" said the dame, on a January night, when the evidence had come in overwhelmingly,--"Tourtelot! what does it all mean?" "D'n' know," says the Deacon, stirring his flip,--"d'n' know. It's my opinion the parson has his sly humors about him." "Do you think it's true, Samuel?" "Waael, Huldy,--I _du_." "Tourtelot! finish your flip, and go to bed; it's past ten." And the Deacon went. XIV Toward the latter end of the winter there arrived at the parsonage the new mistress,--in the person of Miss Eliza Johns, the elder sister of the incumbent, and a spinster of the ripe age of three-and-thirty. For the last twelve years she had maintained a lonely, but matronly, command of the old homestead of the late Major Johns, in the town of Canterbury. She was intensely proud of the memory of her father, and of _his_ father before him,--every inch a Johns. No light cause could have provoked her to a sacrifice of the name; and of weightier causes she had been spared the trial. The marriage of her brother had always been more or less a source of mortification to her. The Handbys, though excellent plain people, were of no particular distinction. Rachel had a pretty face, with which Benjamin had grown suddenly demented. That source of mortification and of disturbed intimacy was now buried in the grave. Benjamin had won a reputation for dignity and ability which was immensely gratifying to her. She had assured him of it again and again in her occasional letters. The success of his Election Sermon had been an event of the greatest interest to her, which she had expressed in an epistle of three pages, with every comma in its place, and full of gratulations. Her commas were _always_ in place; so were her stops of all kinds: her precision was something marvellous. This precision had enabled her to manage the little property which had been left her in such a way as to maintain always about her establishment an air of well-ordered thrift. She concealed adroitly all the shifts--if there were any--by which she avoided the reproach of seeming poor.