choed both the squire's Ho, ho, ho! and Mrs. Hazeldean's Ha, ha, ha!

Not so the parson. He had so keen and sportsmanlike an interest in the
game, that even his adversaries' mistakes ruffled him. And you would
hear him, with elevated voice and agitated gestures, laying down
the law, quoting Hoyle, appealing to all the powers of memory and
common-sense against the very delinquencies by which he was enriched,--a
waste of eloquence that always heightened the hilarity of Mr. and Mrs.
Hazeldean. While these four were thus engaged, Mrs. Dale, who had come
with her husband despite her headache, sat on the sofa beside Miss
Jemima, or rather beside Miss Jemima's Flimsey, which had already
secured the centre of the sofa, and snarled at the very idea of being
disturbed. And Master Frank--at a table by himself--was employed
sometimes in looking at his pumps and sometimes at Gilray's Caricatures,
which his mother had provided for his intellectual requirements. Mrs.
Dale, in her heart, liked Miss Jemima better than Mrs. Hazeldean, of
whom she was rather in awe, notwithstanding they had been little girls
together, and occasionally still called each other Harry and Carry. But
those tender diminutives belonged to the "Dear" genus, and were rarely
employed by the ladies, except at times when, had they been little girls
still, and the governess out of the way, they would have slapped and
pinched each other. Mrs. Dale was still a very pretty woman, as
Mrs. Hazeldean was still a very fine woman. Mrs. Dale painted in
water-colours, and sang, and made card-racks and penholders, and was
called an "elegant, accomplished woman;" Mrs. Hazeldean cast up the
squire's accounts, wrote the best part of his letters, kept a large
establishment in excellent order, and was called "a clever, sensible
woman." Mrs. Dale had headaches and nerves; Mrs. Hazeldean had neither
nerves nor headaches. Mrs. Dale said, "Harry had no real harm in her,
but was certainly very masculine;" Mrs. Hazeldean said, "Carry would
be a good creature but for her airs and graces." Mrs. Dale said Mrs.
Hazeldean was "just made to be a country squire's lady;" Mrs. Hazeldean
said, "Mrs. Dale was the last person in the world who ought to have
been a parson's wife." Carry, when she spoke of Harry to a third person,
said, "Dear Mrs. Hazeldean;" Harry, when she referred incidentally
to Carry, said, "Poor Mrs. Dale." And now the reader knows why Mrs.
Hazeldean called Mrs. Dale "poor,"--at lea