exuberance of youth, and when the youthful pair are highly delighted with the position that has been acquired, _he_ is profoundly impressed with the sense of his importance, and _she_ exalted at the notion of having married a “clergyman and a gentleman;” _he_ is apt to be stuck up, and _she_ is very apt to be huffy. It’s bad enough to be associated officially with an underbred man, but it’s a great deal worse to find yourself brought into social relations, which cannot be avoided, with an underbred woman. The curate’s wife is sometimes a very dreadful personage, but then most dreadful when she is a “young person” of your own parish who has angled for the clerical stickleback and landed him. The Rev. Percy De la Pole was a courtly gentleman, sensitive, fastidious, and just a trifle, a little trifle, distant in his demeanour. His curate, the Rev. Giles Goggs, was a worthy young fellow enough, painstaking and assiduous, anxious to do his duty, and not at all airified. We all liked him till Rebecca Busk overcame him. Mr. De la Pole was cautious and reserved by temperament; but who has never committed a mistake? In an evil hour--how could he have been so imprudent?--he gently warned the curate against the wiles of Miss Busk and her family, telling him that she was far from being a desirable match, and going to the length of saying plainly that she was making very indelicate advances. “All that may be quite true,” replied Mr. Goggs, “but I am sure you will soon change your opinion. I come in now to let you know that I am engaged to be married to Miss Busk.” From that day our reverend neighbour had so bad a time of it that it is commonly believed his valuable life was shortened by his sufferings. I am afraid some people behaved very cruelly, for they could not help laughing. Mrs. Goggs took her revenge in the most vicious way. On all public occasions she clasped the rector’s arm and looked up in his face with the tenderest interest. She tripped across lawns at garden parties to pluck him by the sleeve, screamed out with shrill delight when he appeared, called him her dear old father confessor, giggled and smirked and patted him, and fairly drove him out of the place at last by finding that he had twice preached borrowed sermons, and keeping the discovery back till the opportune moment arrived, when, at a large wedding party, she shook her greasy little ringlets at him with a wicked laugh, exclaiming, “Ah! you dear old sly-boots, when you can speak like that why do you preach the Penny Pulpit to us?” The wretched victim could not hold up his head after that, and when a kind neighbour strongly advised him to dismiss the curate whose wife was unbearable, the broken-down old gentleman feebly objected. “My dear friend, I may have an opportunity of getting preferment for Mr. Goggs some day, but in the meantime I have no power to send away my curate because his wife--well, because his wife is _not nice_.”