woollen stocking; the click-click of her
knitting-needles is the running accompaniment to all her conversation,
and in her utmost enjoyment of spoiling a friend's self-satisfaction, she
was never known to spoil a stocking. Mrs. Patten does not admire this
excessive click-clicking activity. Quiescence in an easy-chair, under the
sense of compound interest perpetually accumulating, has long seemed an
ample function to her, and she does her malevolence gently. She is a
pretty little old woman of eighty, with a close cap and tiny flat white
curls round her face, as natty and unsoiled and invariable as the waxen
image of a little old lady under a glass-case; once a lady's-maid, and
married for her beauty. She used to adore her husband, and now she adores
her money, cherishing a quiet blood-relation's hatred for her niece,
Janet Gibbs, who, she knows, expects a large legacy, and whom she is
determined to disappoint. Her money shall all go in a lump to a distant
relation of her husband's, and Janet shall be saved the trouble of
pretending to cry, by finding that she is left with a miserable pittance.

Mrs. Patten has more respect for her neighbour Mr. Hackit than for most
people. Mr. Hackit is a shrewd substantial man, whose advice about crops
is always worth listening to, and who is too well off to want to borrow
money.

And now that we are snug and warm with this little tea-party, while it is
freezing with February bitterness outside, we will listen to what they
are talking about.

'So,' said Mr. Pilgrim, with his mouth only half empty of muffin, 'you
had a row in Shepperton Church last Sunday. I was at Jim Hood's, the
bassoon-man's, this morning, attending his wife, and he swears he'll be
revenged on the parson--a confounded, methodistical, meddlesome chap, who
must be putting his finger in every pie. What was it all about?'

'O, a passill o' nonsense,' said Mr. Hackit, sticking one thumb between
the buttons of his capacious waistcoat, and retaining a pinch of snuff
with the other--for he was but moderately given to 'the cups that cheer
but not inebriate', and had already finished his tea; 'they began to sing
the wedding psalm for a new-married couple, as pretty a psalm an' as
pretty a tune as any in the prayer-book. It's been sung for every
new-married couple since I was a boy. And what can be better?' Here Mr.
Hackit stretched out his left arm, threw back his head, and broke into
melody--

'O what a happy thing