this last enabled her to make an
intermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of her
house-wifely 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 savories, 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
neighboring town of Whinborough till the shop window of a certain newly
arrived confectioner had been revealed to her, stored with the most airy
and appetizing trifles--of a make and coloring quite metropolitan. She
had flattened her gray curls against the window for one deliberative
moment; had then rushed in; and as soon as the carrier's cart of Long
Whindale, which she was now anxiously awaiting, should have arrived,
bearing with it the produce of that adventure, Mrs. Thornburgh would
be a proud woman, prepared to meet a legion of rectors' wives without
flinching. Not, indeed, in all respects a woman at peace with herself
and the world. In the country, where every household should be
self-contained, a certain discredit attaches in every well-regulated
mind to 'getting things in.' Mrs. Thornburgh was also nervous at the