these are--or were when I knew the locality--small and fully occupied
by their possessors. The larger and better is the parsonage, in which
lived the parson and his daughter; and the smaller is a freehold
residence of a certain Miss Le Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred
acres, which was rented by one Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed
some thirty acres round her own house, which she managed herself;
regarding herself to be quite as great in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and
altogether superior to him in the article of cyder. "But yeu has to
pay no rent, Miss," Farmer Cloysey would say, when Miss Le Smyrger
expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too defiant. "Yeu pays
no rent, or yeu couldn't do it." Miss Le Smyrger was an old maid, with
a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty acres of fee-
simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age, a
constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under
the sun.

And now for the parson and his daughter. The parson's name was
Woolsworthy--or Woolathy, as it was pronounced by all those who lived
around him--the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
those parts. That name of Patience had not been well chosen for her,
for she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her convictions, and
inclined to express them freely. She had but two closely intimate
friends in the world, and by both of them this freedom of expression
had now been fully permitted to her since she was a child. Miss Le
Smyrger and her father were well accustomed to her ways, and on the
whole well satisfied with them. The former was equally free and
equally warm-tempered as herself, and as Mr. Woolsworthy was allowed by
his daughter to be quite paramount on his own subject--for he had a
subject--he did not object to his daughter being paramount on all