with the management of bees, and she is so busy because the paper is only
borrowed, and has to be returned. Most of the papers and books that come
to the vicarage have to be hastily read for the same reason. Mrs. F---- is
doing her very best and hardest to increase the Rev. F----'s income--she
has tried to do so for some years, and despite repeated failures is
bravely, perhaps a little wearily, still trying. There is not much left
for her to experiment with. The goat surreptitiously nibbling the valuable
shrubs outside the palings is a member of a flock that once seemed to
promise fair. Goats at one time (she was persuaded) were the means of
ready wealth--they could live anywhere, on anything (the shrubs to wit),
and yielded such rich milk; it far surpassed that of the shorthorn; there
was the analysis to prove it! Such milk must of course be worth money,
beside which there were the kids, and the cheese and butter.

Alas! the goats quickly obtained so evil a reputation, worse than that of
the rabbits for biting off the shooting vegetation, that no one would have
them on the land. The milk was all the analysis declared it, but in that
outlying village, which did not contain two houses above the quality of a
farmstead, there was no one to buy it. There was a prejudice against the
butter which could not be got over; and the cheese--well, the cheese
resembled a tablet of dark soap. Hodge would not eat it at a gift; he
smelt it, picked a morsel off on the tip of his clasp knife, and threw it
aside in contempt. One by one the goats were got rid of, and now but two
or three remained; she could not make up her mind to part with all, for
living creatures, however greatly they have disappointed, always enlist
the sympathies of women.

Poultry was the next grand discovery--they ate their heads off, refused to
lay eggs, and, when by frequent purchase they became numerous and promised
to pay, quietly died by the score, seized with an epidemic. She learnt in