During the absence of the ladies upstairs, the parson had the forethought to give me a two-shilling-bit, for the purpose of feeing the clerk. I was so struck by this further instance of his generous courtesy, that I asked the name of my benefactor, for I swore that I would not rest content until I had repaid him. It seemed that this obscure country clergyman bore the name of Scriven. It is a name as far as I can make out, that has not yet come to any eminence in letters or the humane arts; nor has it attained to any signal preferment in that Church of which it is so true an ornament. His great learning, his simple ingenuous character, his notable generosity, his tenderness of heart, his implicit courtesy have never advanced him one step, so far as I can gather, in the world's opinion. For aught I know he is still the country parson on his forty pounds or so a year, whilst many a sleek old worldling with half of his learning and a tithe of his humanity is my lord Bishop riding by in his gilt coach with footmen behind it, the recipient of a hundred times more kudos and emolument. When Cynthia came down again she looked wonderfully spic and span. Her hair had been done into a becoming rustic mode, most admirably neat, and showed off its qualities of abundance, gloss and curliness to true advantage. She had not thought fit to call in the aid of Mrs. Blodgett's gown it is true, but her own became her as well as another, and happily at the same time afforded no index to her degree. It was a plain and simple country dress, sober in hue and severe in its style. Yet it fell so exactly into the exquisite lines of her shape, that she and the dress became one as it were; and if there was a woman's tailor who could have exhibited a lovely figure more artfully than that, she must have been good Mrs. Nature herself. Cynthia, for all her country clothes, looked so sweet, arch and dainty too, so much the gentlewoman without the affectations that go with _ton_ and "fine," that by their absence the breeding that lurked in every inch of her, the carriage of her person, slender and small as it was, the set of her head, and the cast of her features became more apparent. These evidences had even an effect on Mrs. Blodgett. She was mightily pleased with her _protégée_. "I don't know who _you_ are, young man," says she, "and I won't say all that's in my mind about you, but I hope you know that you are taking a real born lady to wife. Such white hands I never did see, and such pretty ways, saving her presence, as she 'ave too. You are not a quarter good enough, young man, for the likes of her, and just keep that in your mind and live up to it. But I gravely misdoubt me as to whether you will, for take you all round you are about as disreppitable and low a fellow as ever I saw. To think that such as you should have lured the pretty lamb from her father's house. But as I've told her, it is not yet too late for her to go back again."