almost grudge that beautiful Gothic church to those regular red-brick
uniform rows of deformity.'

'I do not think even the new church can boast of more beauty than St.
Mary's,' said Anne.

'No, and it wants the handiwork of that best artist, old Time,' said
Elizabeth; 'it will be long before Queen Victoria's head on the
corbel at the new church is of as good a colour as Queen Eleanor's at
the old one, and we never shall see anything so pretty at St.
Austin's as the yellow lichen cap, and plume of spleen-wort feathers,
which Edward the First wears.'

'How beautiful the old church tower is!' said Anne, turning round to
look at it; 'and the gable ends of your house, and the tall trees of
the garden, with the cloistered alms-houses, have still quite a
monastic air.'

'If you only look at the tower with its intersecting arches and their
zig-zag mouldings,' said Elizabeth, 'and shut your eyes to our
kitchen chimney, on which rests all the fame of the Vicar before
last.'

'What can you mean?' said Anne.

'That when anyone wishes to distinguish the Reverend Hugh Puddington
from all other Vicars of Abbeychurch, his appellation is "The man
that built the kitchen chimney."'

'That being, I suppose, the only record he has left behind him,' said