d his
breakfast-parlour with erect head and powerful step. In the presence
of a third person he assumed the lord and master; and that wise and
talented lady too well knew the man to whom her lot for life was
bound, to stretch her authority beyond the point at which it would be
borne. Strangers at Plumstead Episcopi, when they saw the imperious
brow with which he commanded silence from the large circle of
visitors, children, and servants who came together in the morning to
hear him read the word of God, and watched how meekly that wife seated
herself behind her basket of keys with a little girl on each side,
as she caught that commanding glance; strangers, I say, seeing this,
could little guess that some fifteen minutes since she had stoutly
held her ground against him, hardly allowing him to open his mouth in
his own defence. But such is the tact and talent of women!

And now let us observe the well-furnished breakfast-parlour at
Plumstead Episcopi, and the comfortable air of all the belongings of
the rectory. Comfortable they certainly were, but neither gorgeous
nor even grand; indeed, considering the money that had been spent
there, the eye and taste might have been better served; there was an
air of heaviness about the rooms which might have been avoided without
any sacrifice of propriety; colours might have been better chosen and
lights more perfectly diffused; but perhaps in doing so the thorough
clerical aspect of the whole might have been somewhat marred; at any
rate, it was not without ample consideration that those thick, dark,
costly carpets were put down; those embossed, but sombre papers hung
up; those heavy curtains draped so as to half exclude the light of
the sun: nor were these old-fashioned chairs, bought at a price far
exceeding that now given for more modern goods, without a purpose.
The breakfast-service on the table was equally costly and equally
plain; the apparent object had been to spend money without obtaining
brilliancy or splendour. The urn was of thick and solid silver, as
were also the tea-pot, coffee-pot, cream-ewer, and sugar-bowl; the
cups were old, dim dragon china, worth about a pound a piece, but very
despicable in the eyes of the uninitiated. The silver forks were so
heavy as to be disagreeable to the hand, and the bread-basket was of a
weight really formidable to any but robust persons. The tea consumed
was the very best, the coffee the very blackest, the cream the
very thicke