honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not
have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended.
But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-
spoken one; and after all she had some little feeling for the son of a
gentleman, and a decayed, fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account,
had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she,
with her strong common-sense, attach all the importance which Mrs.
Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which
she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it." The
widow's mind was made up, and Mrs. Hazeldean departed,--with much chagrin
and some displeasure.

Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made
was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked, the key
left at a neighbour's to be given to the steward; and, on further
inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been
removed by the errand cart in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded
in finding a cottage on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and
there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast,
and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.

"Parson!" cried the squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was
walking arm in arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in
the Almshouse, "this is all your fault. Why did you not go and talk to
that brute of a boy and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder
enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."

"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the parson, in a
tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. "But it was in vain!
O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the stocks,--'quieta non