'Oh, Rose will make up!' said Catherine, glancing, not without a spark
of mischief in her gray eyes, at Rose's tortured locks; 'and mamma's new
cap, which will be superb!'

CHAPTER II

About four o'clock on the afternoon of the day which was to be marked in
the annals of Long Whindale as that of Mrs. Thornburgh's 'high tea,'
that lady was seated in the vicarage garden, her spectacles on her nose,
a large _couvre-pied_ over her knees, and the Whinborough newspaper on
her lap. The neighbourhood of this last enabled her to make an
intermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of her
housewifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The vicar's wife
was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest. All her
_solid_ preparations for the evening were over, and in her own mind she
decided that with them there was no possible fault to be found. The
cook, Sarah, had gone about her work in a spirit at once lavish and
fastidious, breathed into her by her mistress. No better tongue, no
plumper chickens, than those which would grace her board to-night were
to be found, so Mrs. Thornburgh was persuaded, in the district. And so
with everything else of a substantial kind. On this head the hostess
felt no anxieties.

But a 'tea' in the north country depends for distinction, not on its
solids or its savouries, but on its sweets. A rural hostess earns her
reputation, not by a discriminating eye for butcher's-meat, but by her
inventiveness in cakes and custards. And it was just here, with regard
to this 'bubble reputation,' that the vicar's wife of Long Whindale was
particularly sensitive. Was she not expecting Mrs. Seaton, the wife of
the Rector of Whinborough--odious woman--to tea? Was it not incumbent on
her to do well, nay, to do brilliantly, in the eyes of this local
magnate? And how was it possible to do brilliantly in this matter with a
cook whose recipes were hopelessly old-fashioned, and who had an
exasperating belief in the sufficiency of buttered 'whigs' and home-made
marmalade for all requirements?

Stung by these thoughts, Mrs. Thornburgh had gone prowling about the
neighbouring town of Whinborough till the shop window of a certain
newly-arrived confectioner had been revealed to her, stored with the
most airy and appetising trifles--of a make and colouring quite
metropolitan. She had flattened her gray curls against the window for
one deliberative moment; had then rushed in; an