questions which gave Tommy the meanest
opinion of his intellect.

'Well, little Corduroys, have they milked the geese today?'

'Milked the geese! why, they don't milk the geese, you silly!'

'No! dear heart! why, how do the goslings live, then?'

The nutriment of goslings rather transcending Tommy's observations in
natural history, he feigned to understand this question in an exclamatory
rather than an interrogatory sense, and became absorbed in winding up his
top.

'Ah, I see you don't know how the goslings live! But did you notice how
it rained sugar-plums yesterday?' (Here Tommy became attentive.) 'Why,
they fell into my pocket as I rode along. You look in my pocket and see
if they didn't.' Tommy, without waiting to discuss the alleged
antecedent, lost no time in ascertaining the presence of the agreeable
consequent, for he had a well-founded belief in the advantages of diving
into the Vicar's pocket. Mr. Gilfil called it his wonderful pocket,
because, as he delighted to tell the 'young shavers' and 'two-shoes'--so
he called all little boys and girls--whenever he put pennies into it,
they turned into sugar-plums or gingerbread, or some other nice thing.
Indeed, little Bessie Parrot, a flaxen-headed 'two-shoes', very white and
fat as to her neck, always had the admirable directness and sincerity to
salute him with the question--'What zoo dot in zoo pottet?'

You can imagine, then, that the christening dinners were none the less
merry for the presence of the parson. The farmers relished his society
particularly, for he could not only smoke his pipe, and season the
details of parish affairs with abundance of caustic jokes and proverbs,
but, as Mr. Bond often said, no man knew more than the Vicar about the
breed of cows and horses. He had grazing-land of his own about five miles
off, which a bailiff, ostensibly a tenant, farmed under his direction;
and to ride backwards and forwards, and look after the buying and selling
of stock, was the old gentleman's chief relaxation, now his hunting days
were over. To hear him discussing the respective merits of the Devonshire
breed and the short-horns, or the last foolish decision of the
magistrates about a pauper, a superficial observer might have seen little
difference, beyond his superior shrewdness, between the Vicar and his
bucolic parishioners; for it was his habit to approximate his accent and
mode of speech to theirs, doubtless because he thought it a mere
frustration