"We have been trying to make acquaintance with some of your flock," said Mary. "The last thing I would advise you to do," he answered; "there are not a worse lot anywhere. Desperate poachers! Not a head of game safe from them." "Perhaps they may be improved." He shrugged his shoulders. "See what my father has to say of them." "Is there much distress?" "There ought not to be, for old Dr Fogram and my father send down a handsome sum for blankets and coals every Christmas, and Uphill takes care to get its share!" He laughed. "No sinecure distributing!" "We have not been to see the school yet." "A decrepit old crone, poor old body! She will soon have to give in. She can't even keep the children from pulling off her spectacles." "And Sunday School?" "Well, my father doesn't approve of cramming the poor children. I believe the Methodists have something of the kind at Downhill; but there is no one to attend to one here, and the place is quite free of dissent." "Cause and effect?" said Captain Carbonel, drily. "Would you object if we tried to teach the poor children something?" asked Mrs Carbonel, cautiously. "Oh no, not at all. All the good ladies are taking it up, I believe. Mrs Grantley, of Poppleby, is great at it, and I see no harm in it; but you'll have to reckon with my father. He says there will soon be no ploughmen, and my mother says there will be no more cooks or housemaids. You'd better write to old Fogram, he'll back you up." Mary had it on her lips to ask him about Widow Mole, but he had turned to Edmund to discuss the hunting and the shooting of the neighbourhood. They discovered, partly at this time, and partly from other visitors, that he was the younger son of the squire of Downhill, who had been made to take Holy Orders without any special fitness for it, because there was a living likely soon to be ready for him, and in the meantime he was living at home, an amiable, harmless young man, but bred up so as to have no idea of the duties of his vocation, and sharing freely in the sports of his family, acting as if he believed, like his father, that they were the most important obligations of man; and accepting the general household belief that only the Methodistical could wish for more religious practice.