and seemed likely to stay there, for reasons no one ever mentioned at
Billingsfield, because no one knew anything about them. From time to time
a legal looking personage drove up to the Duke's Head, which was kept by
Mr. Abraham Boosey, who was also undertaker to the parish, and which was
thought to be a very good inn. The legal personage stayed a day or two,
spending most of his time at the Hall and in driving about to the
scattered farms which represented the estate, but he never came to the
vicarage, nor did the vicar ever seem to know what he was doing nor why
he came. "He came on business"--that was all that anybody knew. His
business was to collect rents, of course; but what he did with them, no
one was bold enough to surmise. The estate was in Chancery, it was said,
and the definition conveyed about as much to the mind of the average
inhabitant of Billingsfield, as if he had been informed that the moon was
in perigee or the sun in Scorpio. The practical result of its being in
Chancery was that no one lived there.

John Short liked Mrs. Ambrose and the Honourable Cornelius behaved to her
with well bred affability. She always said Cornelius had very nice
manners, as indeed he had and had need to have. Occasionally, perhaps
four or five times in the year, the Reverend Edward Pewlay, who had what
he called a tenor voice, and his wife, who played the pianoforte very
fairly, came over to assist at a Penny Reading. He lived "over Harlow
way," as the natives expressed it; he was what was called in those parts
a rabid Anglican, because he preached in his surplice and had services on
the Saints' days, and the vicar of Billingsfield did not sympathise in
his views. Nevertheless he was very useful at Penny Readings, and on one
of these occasions produced a very ingenious ghost for the delectation of
the rustics, by means of a piece of plate glass and a couple of lamps.

There had indeed been festivities at the vicarage to which as many as