They were Boeotian, these county people, crass, ignorant, and rusted with prejudice from want of contact with the world, but they were by no means bad-hearted, and they took the parson's remonstrance in very good part. Each one who had already sent Martin Gurwood an invitation, managed to grip his hand before the evening was over, and took occasion to renew it, declaring he should have no occasion to reiterate the remarks which he had just made, and which they perfectly understood. Nor had he; he went a round of these solemn festivities, finding each one, both during the presence of the ladies and after their withdrawal, perfectly decorous, but unspeakably dull. He had not been sufficiently long in the neighbourhood for the local gossip to possess the smallest interest to him; he was not sufficient of an agriculturist to discuss the different methods of farming or the various qualities of food; he could talk about Oxford indeed, where some of his hosts or their friends had young relations whom he had known; he could and did sing well certain Italian songs in a rich tenor voice; and he discussed church architecture and decorations with the young ladies. But the old squires and the young squires cared for none of these things. They remembered how old Anthony Camden would sit by while the broadest stories were told, looking, save from the twinkle in his eye and the curling of his bulbous nether lip, as though he heard them not; with what feeling he would troll out a ballad of Dibdin's, or a bacchanalian ditty; and how the brewing of the bowl of punch, the "stirrup-cup," was always intrusted to his practised hand. Martin Gurwood took a glass of cold water before leaving; and if he were dining out any distance always had the one hired fly of the neighbourhood to convey him back to the vicarage. No wonder that the laughter-loving, roisterous squires shook their heads when they thought of old Anthony Camden, and mourned over the glories of those departed days.