My lady would be puzzled by this, and by many other of Mr. Mountford's
speeches. But he had been appointed by my lord, and she could not
question her dead husband's wisdom; and she knew that the dinners were
always sent, and often a guinea or two to help to pay the doctor's bills;
and Mr. Mountford was true blue, as we call it, to the back-bone; hated
the dissenters and the French; and could hardly drink a dish of tea
without giving out the toast of "Church and King, and down with the
Rump." Moreover, he had once had the honour of preaching before the King
and Queen, and two of the Princesses, at Weymouth; and the King had
applauded his sermon audibly with,--"Very good; very good;" and that was
a seal put upon his merit in my lady's eyes.

Besides, in the long winter Sunday evenings, he would come up to the
Court, and read a sermon to us girls, and play a game of picquet with my
lady afterwards; which served to shorten the tedium of the time. My lady
would, on those occasions, invite him to sup with her on the dais; but as
her meal was invariably bread and milk only, Mr. Mountford preferred
sitting down amongst us, and made a joke about its being wicked and
heterodox to eat meagre on Sunday, a festival of the Church. We smiled
at this joke just as much the twentieth time we heard it as we did at the
first; for we knew it was coming, because he always coughed a little
nervously before he made a joke, for fear my lady should not approve: and
neither she nor he seemed to remember that he had ever hit upon the idea
before.

Mr. Mountford died quite suddenly at last. We were all very sorry to
lose him. He left some of his property (for he had a private estate) to
the poor of the parish, to furnish them with an annual Christmas dinner
of roast beef and plum pudding, for which he wrote out a very good
receipt in the codicil to his will.