unting and horse-racing--to
which, indeed, might be added everything under the name of sport--as
regarded the stronger. Sunday comforts were also enemies which he
hated with a vigorous hatred, unless three full services a day, with
sundry intermediate religious readings and exercitations of the
spirit, may be called Sunday comforts. But not on this account should
it be supposed that Mr Stumfold was a dreary, dark, sardonic man.
Such was by no means the case. He could laugh loud. He could be very
jovial at dinner parties. He could make his little jokes about little
pet wickednesses. A glass of wine, in season, he never refused.
Picnics he allowed, and the flirtation accompanying them. He himself
was driven about behind a pair of horses, and his daughters were
horsewomen. His sons, if the world spoke truth, were Nimrods; but
that was in another county, away from the Tantivy hills, and Mr
Stumfold knew nothing of it. In Littlebath Mr Stumfold reigned over
his own set as a tyrant, but to those who obeyed him he was never
austere in his tyranny.

When Miss Mackenzie mentioned Mr Stumfold's name to the doctor, the
doctor felt that he had been wrong in his allusion to the assembly
rooms. Mr Stumfold's people never went to assembly rooms. He, a
doctor of medicine, of course went among saints and sinners alike,
but in such a place as Littlebath he had found it expedient to have
one tone for the saints and another for the sinners. Now the Paragon
was generally inhabited by sinners, and therefore he had made his
hint about the assembly rooms. He at once pointed out Mr Stumfold's
church, the spire of which was to be seen as they walked towards the
inn, and said a word in praise of that good man. Not a syllable would
he again have uttered as to the wickednesses of the place, had not
Miss Mackenzie asked some questions as to those assembly rooms.

"How did people get to belong to them? Were they pleasant? What did
they do there? Oh--she could put her name down, could she? If it was
anything in the way of amusement she would certainly like to put her
name down." Dr Pottinger, when on that afternoon he instructed his
wife to call on Miss Mackenzie as soon as that young lady should be
settled, explained that the stranger was very much in the dark as to
the ways and manners of Littlebath.

"What! go to the assembly rooms, and sit under Mr Stumfold!" said Mrs
Pottinger. "She never can do both, you know."

Miss Mackenzie went back to