The consciousness of so much wrong-doing imparted quite a judicial severity to Mrs Featherly's countenance, as she descended heavily at the Vicarage porch, just as the bells were chiming merrily and the people clustering in knots outside the church. There had been rain in the early morning, and large clouds were still coming up, but the sun was shining after the shower, and the wet on grass and roof only gave a touch of additional brightness. The boys who were too big to go to school lounged up in little companies, too shamefaced to venture alone, and putting on an appearance of great boldness and explosive mirth, to cover their actual bashfulness. The girls generally tossed their heads, walking on demurely without taking any notice of their contemporaries, but a ruddy-cheeked young farmer or two, who had come from the outskirts of the village, received such smiling glances from the same damsels as to bring down an occasional sharp remark from one of the elder women. "You'll a lost yere eyes as well as yere bonnet before iver you gets into choorch, Emma," said one of these matrons, with a satirical look at the red rose that crowned its wearer's last effort at millinery. Emma, who was blue-eyed and literal-minded, gave an anxious pull to assure herself of the safety of the structure, before she answered good-humouredly,-- "You see, Mrs Anders, Susan gits a new shape for me into Under'm now and then, and I'm sure, if Polly wanted wan--" "My Polly!" began Mrs Andrews, in so high a staccato of indignation that her husband, who was standing nearer the porch, looked round and said, in a deprecating tone,-- "Stiddy, missus, stiddy. Hyur's the new parson coming oop to t' choorch." "Ees, fay, so it be," said another man. "Hers so smarl us can sceerce see un." "I can find him a tex for his sermond," retorted Mrs Andrews, lowering her voice a little, but looking at Emma with wrathful contempt, "`The pompses and vanities of this wicked wordel.' That's a tex as might agree with some as is not so far off at this minit, and doan't know how to be'ave themselves afor their betters." "That bain't no tex, though," said old Araunah Stokes, slowly shaking his head. "That's noa moor than watt godfaythers and godmoothers have got to doo in t' catechiz. Noa, noa, thicky thyur bain't noan of the Scripter texes."