be manager. He was in the bank of the London agents of Rumbold,
Martin & Rumbold, and had been strongly recommended by the city firm
as just the person to take charge of a branch which needed thorough
reorganisation. He succeeded, and nobody in Fenmarket was more
respected. He lived, however, a life apart from his neighbours,
excepting so far as business was concerned. He went to church once
on Sunday because the bank expected him to go, but only once, and had
nothing to do with any of its dependent institutions. He was a great
botanist, very fond of walking, and in the evening, when Fenmarket
generally gathered itself into groups for gossip, either in the
street or in back parlours, or in the 'Crown and Sceptre,' Mr
Hopgood, tall, lean and stately, might be seen wandering along the
solitary roads searching for flowers, which, in that part of the
world, were rather scarce. He was also a great reader of the best
books, English, German and French, and held high doctrine, very high
for those days, on the training of girls, maintaining that they need,
even more than boys, exact discipline and knowledge. Boys, he
thought, find health in an occupation; but an uncultivated, unmarried
girl dwells with her own untutored thoughts, which often breed
disease. His two daughters, therefore, received an education much
above that which was usual amongst people in their position, and each
of them--an unheard of wonder in Fenmarket--had spent some time in a
school in Weimar. Mr Hopgood was also peculiar in his way of dealing
with his children. He talked to them and made them talk to him, and
whatever they read was translated into speech; thought, in his house,
was vocal.

Mrs Hopgood, too, had been the intimate friend of her husband, and
was the intimate friend of her daughters. She was now nearly sixty,
but still erect and graceful, and everybody could see that the