Or another comes at night-time and wants to speak to us on very particular business, and implores us to tide him over a real difficulty, and.... “What? do you mean to say, you lend fellows money?” Yes. I mean to say I have even done that and very very rarely repented of it, and I mean to say there are men, and women too, to whom I would lend money again if I had it; but it does not follow that I would lend it to everybody, least of all that I would lend it to you, Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Try it on, sir! Try it on! and see whether you would depart triumphant from the interview! Moreover, the country parson has always to pay a little--just a very little--more than any one else for most things that come to his door. The market has always risen when he wants to buy, and has always suddenly fallen when he wants to sell. The small man’s oats are invariably superior to any one’s when he has a small parcel to dispose of to the parson. As to the price of hay, when the parson has to buy it, that is truly startling. I never see half a rood of carrots growing in a labourer’s allotment, but I feel sure I shall have to buy those carrots before Christmas, and sorry as I am to observe how rarely any fruit trees are ever planted in a poor man’s garden, I reflect that perhaps it is just as well, for already the damsons and the apples that besiege the rectory are almost overwhelming. I never ask what becomes of them, but it is morally and physically impossible that they should be eaten under this roof. “But, my dear, you must buy Widow Coe’s damsons; nobody else will, you know!” This is what I am told is “considering the poor people”; that is our way of putting it. You, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, you call it demoralizing them. Then, too, the country parson is expected to “encourage the local industries.” I wonder whether they make pillow-lace in Bedfordshire as they did once. If they do, and especially if the demand for it in the outer world has waned, the country parsons’ wives in that part of England must have a very trying time of it.