Perched on the hard stool, Mr. Strange, for lack of other employment, had noted the dainties as they came in. The wisest of us must unbend sometimes. A basket of muffins full to the brim; eleven sorts of jam--since it was discovered that the Reverend Guy loved preserves to satiety, the assortments had never failed; thirteen kinds of biscuits, trays of cake, glass pots of marmalade and honey, ripe rich fruits of all tempting colours, chocolate creams, candied oranges, lovely flowers. Mr. Strange grew tired of looking; his head ached with the noise, his eyes with the splendour of the ladies' dresses. For the company was arriving now, thick and threefold. There had arisen a slight, a very slight, modicum of displeasure at Mr. Cattacomb. That zealous divine had been met four or five times walking with Mr. Moore's third daughter, Jemima: at the last lecture he had distinctly been seen man[oe]uvring to get the young lady next to him. It gave offence. While he belonged to them all, all adored him; but let him once single out one of them for favour more than the rest, and woe betide his popularity. "And that little idiot of a Jemima Moore, too, who had not two ideas in her vain head!" as Jane St. Henry confidentially remarked. However, the Reverend Guy, upon receiving a hint from Miss Blake that he was giving umbrage, vowed and protested that it was all accident and imagination--that he hardly knew Miss Jemima from her sisters. So peace was restored, and the kettledrum grew out of it. "I must have my chop all the same, Mrs. Jinks," said Mr. Strange to the widow; who had come upstairs to ask the loan of his sugar tongs, and looked very red and excited over it. "In course, sir, you shall have it. It might be ten minutes later, sir, than ord'nary, but I do hope you'll excuse it, sir, if it is. You see how I'm drove with 'em." "I see that there seems to be a large company arriving." "Company!" returned Mrs. Jinks, the word causing her temper to explode; "I don't know how they'll ever get inside the room. I shall have to borrow a form from the school next door but one, and put it in the passage for some of 'em; and, when that and the chairs is filled, the rest must stand. Never as long as I live, will I take in a unmarried parson-gent again, if he's one of this here new sort that gets the ladies about him all day in church and gives drums out of it. Hark at the laughing! Them two parsons be in their glory." "The ladies must be fond of drums, I should think, by their getting them up so frequently," remarked Mr. Strange.