is wife. In the latter
case, Mrs. Stanbury would, she thought, be little more than an
upper servant, or keeper,--as she expressed it to herself. Such an
arrangement appeared to her to be quite disgraceful in a Stanbury;
but yet she believed that such must be the existing arrangement, as
she could not bring herself to conceive that Hugh Stanbury could keep
such an establishment over his mother's head out of money earned by
writing for a penny newspaper. There would be a triumph of democracy
in this which would vanquish her altogether. She had, therefore, been
anxious enough to trample on Priscilla and upon all the affairs of
the Clock House; but yet she had been unable to ignore the nobility
of Priscilla's truth, and having acknowledged it to herself she found
herself compelled to acknowledge it aloud. She sat down to think in
silence, and it was not till she had fortified herself by her first
draught of beer, and till she had finished her first portion of bread
and cheese, that she spoke. "I have written to your sister herself,
this time," she said. "I don't know that I ever wrote a line to her
before in my life."

"Poor Priscilla!" Dorothy did not mean to be severe on her aunt,
either in regard to the letters which had not been written, or to the
one letter which now had been written. But Dorothy pitied her sister,
whom she felt to be in trouble.

"Well; I don't know about her being so poor. Priscilla, I'll be
bound, thinks as well of herself as any of us do."

"She'd cut her fingers off before she'd mean to do wrong," said
Dorothy.

"But what does that come to? What's the good of that? It isn't
meaning to do right that will save us. For aught I know, the Radicals
may mean to do right. Mr. Beales means to do right--perhaps."

"But, aunt,--if everybody did the best they could?"

"Tush, my dear! you are getting beyond your depth. There are such
things still, thank God! as spiritual pastors and masters. Entrust
yourself to them. Do what they think right." Now if aught were known
in Exeter of Miss Stanbury, this was known,--that if any clergyman
volunteered to give to her, unasked and uninvited, counsel, either
ghostly or bodily, that clergyman would be sent from her presence
with a wigging which he would not soon forget. The thing had been
tried more than once, and the wigging had been complete. There was no
more attentive listener in church than Miss Stanbury; and she would,
now and again, appeal to a clergyman o