nd a
certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline
nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened tempers of
that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming
countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups,
jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter, cheering
words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts afforded
by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the
squire, who preferred productive labour, justly complained, "would never
finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran grandsire, who
still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in a family that "came
too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little behind, in the whitest
of trousers and the stiffest of neckcloths,--with a look of suppressed
roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness
of mien,--without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had
done anything yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a credit
in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from
too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some
masculine oak whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to
self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped
many a village lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift
from her own privy purse; notwithstanding the assurances with which she
accompanied the marriage gift,--namely, that "the bridegroom would turn
out like the rest of his ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to
think that it would be all one in the approaching crash!" So that she
had her warm partisans, especially amongst the young; while the
slim captain, on whose arm she rested her forefinger, was at least
a civil-spoken gentleman, who had never done any harm, and who would
doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay, even
the fat footman who came last, with the family Prayer-book, had his due
share in the general association of neighbourly kindness between hall
and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the
right-hand of fellowship with a full horn of October in the clasp of
it; and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of
the squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew
under the gallery) were.

On his part, too, you could see that the s