Miss Bulpit was the lowest of the Low-Church, so zealous in propagating her own views as to be a severe trial to the vicar, Mr. Langrove. The vicar was a shy, scholarly man and a great lover of peace, but he was often hard pushed to keep the peace with Miss Bulpit. She crossed him in every way, and defied him to his very face; but it was done so mildly, with such an unction of zeal and such a sincere desire to correct his errors and make up for his shortcomings, that it was impossible to treat her like an ordinary antagonist. She had a soup-kitchen and a dispensary in her own house, where the poor of his parish were fed and healed; and if Miss Bulpit made these material things the medium of dealing with their souls, and if they chose to be dealt with, how could Mr. Langrove interfere to prevent it? If she had a call to break the word to others, why should she not obey it just as he obeyed his? He had his pulpit, which she did not interfere with--a mercy for which the vicar was not, perhaps, sufficiently grateful. Miss Bulpit was limited to no restriction of place or time; she could preach anywhere and at a moment’s notice; the water was always at high pressure, and only wanted a touch to set it flowing into any channel; the cottages, the wards of the hospital, the village school, the roadside, any place was a rostrum for her. If she met a group of laborers going home with their spades over their shoulders, Miss Bulpit would accost them with a few good words; and if they took them well, as their class mostly do from ladies, she would plunge into the promiscuous depths of that awful leather bag of hers that was Mr. Langrove’s horror, and evolve from a chaos of pill-boxes, socks, spectacles, soap, black draughts, buns, and bobbins, a packet of tracts, and, selecting an appropriate one, she would proceed to expound it, and wind up with a few texts out of the little black Testament that lived by itself in an outside pocket of the black leather bag. This state of things would have been bad enough, even if Miss Bulpit had held sound views; but what made it infinitely worse was that her orthodoxy was more than doubtful. But there was no way of putting her in her place. She was too rich for that. If she had been a poor woman, like Miss Merrywig, it would have been easy enough; but Miss Bulpit’s fortune had built a bulwark of defence round her, and against these stout walls the vicar’s shafts might be pointed in perfect safety to the enemy. It was a great mercy if they did not recoil on himself. Some persons accused him of being ungrateful. How could he quarrel with her for preaching in the school when she had re-roofed it for him, after he had spent six months in fruitless appeals to the board to do it? How could the authorities of the hospital refuse her the satisfaction of saying a few serious words to the inmates, when she supplied them with unlimited port-wine and jellies, and other delicacies which the authorities could not provide? It was very