CHAPTER III.

MY FIRST MONDAY AT MARSHMALLOWS.





The next day I might expect some visitors. It is a fortunate thing
that English society now regards the parson as a gentleman, else he
would have little chance of being useful to the UPPER CLASSES. But I
wanted to get a good start of them, and see some of my poor before
my rich came to see me. So after breakfast, on as lovely a Monday in
the beginning of autumn as ever came to comfort a clergyman in the
reaction of his efforts to feed his flock on the Sunday, I walked
out, and took my way to the village. I strove to dismiss from my
mind every feeling of DOING DUTY, of PERFORMING MY PART, and all
that. I had a horror of becoming a moral policeman as much as of
"doing church." I would simply enjoy the privilege, more open to me
in virtue of my office, of ministering. But as no servant has a
right to force his service, so I would be the NEIGHBOUR only, until
such time as the opportunity of being the servant should show
itself.

The village was as irregular as a village should be, partly
consisting of those white houses with intersecting parallelograms of
black which still abound in some regions of our island. Just in the