my dear, and read it to me slowly. You make things so plain, because

of practice every Sunday. Oh, Joshua, I never can be sure which you

are greatest in--the Lessons or the Sermon. But before you begin I will

shoot the bolt a little, as if it had caught by accident. Eliza does

rush in upon us sometimes in the most unbecoming, unladylike way. And I

never can get you to reprove her."

"It would be as much as my place is worth, as the maids say when

imagined to have stolen sugar. And I must not read this letter so loud

as the Lessons, unless you wish Lizzie to hear every word, for she has

all her mother's quick senses. There is not much of it, and the scrawl

seems hasty. We might have had more for three and fourpence. But I am

not the one to grumble about bad measure--as the boy said about old

Busby. Now, Maria, listen, but say nothing; if feminine capacity may

compass it. Why, bless my heart, every word of it is French!" The rector

threw down his spectacles, and gazed at his wife reproachfully. But she

smiled with superior innocence.

"What else could you expect, after all his years abroad? I cannot

make out the whole of it, for certain. But surely it is not beyond the

compass of masculine capacity."

"Yes, it is, Maria; and you know it well enough. No honest Englishman

can endure a word of French. Latin, or Greek, or even Hebrew--though I

took to that rather late in life. But French is only fit for women, and

very few of them can manage it. Let us hear what this Frenchman says."

"He is not a Frenchman, Joshua. He is an Englishman, and probably a very

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