vicar; its vicar is venerable, with an eye so mild that to catch it is
to receive a blessing; pleasant little children with happy morning
faces pick butter-cups and go a-nutting at the proper seasons and
curtsey to you as you pass; old women with clean caps and suitable
faces read their Bibles behind latticed windows; hearths are scrubbed
and snowy; appropriate kettles simmer on hobs; climbing roses and trim
gardens are abundant; and it has a lady bountiful of so untiring a
kindness that each of its female inhabitants gets a new flannel
petticoat every Christmas and nothing is asked of her in return but
that she shall, during the ensuing year, be warm and happy and good.
The same thing was asked, I believe, of the male inhabitants, who get
comforters, and also that they should drink seltzer-water whenever
their lower natures urged them to drink rum; but comforters are so
much smaller than petticoats that the men of Symford's sense of
justice rebelled, and since the only time they ever felt really warm
and happy and good was when they were drinking rum they decided that
on the whole it would be more in accordance with their benefactress's
wishes to go on doing it.

Lady Shuttleworth, the lady from whom these comforters and petticoats
proceeded, was a just woman who required no more of others than she
required of herself, and who was busy and kind, and, I am sure happy
and good, on cold water. But then she did not like rum; and I suppose
there are few things quite so easy as not to drink rum if you don't
like it. She lived at Symford Hall, two miles away in another fold of
the hills, and managed the estate of her son who was a minor--at this
time on the very verge of ceasing to be one--with great precision and
skill. All the old cottages in Symford were his, and so were the farms
dotted about the hills. Any one, therefore, seeking a cottage would
have to address himself to the Shuttleworth agent, Mr. Dawson, who too