Stung by these thoughts, Mrs. Thornburgh had gone prowling about
the neighboring town of Whinborough till the shop window of a certain
newly arrived confectioner had been revealed to her, stored with
the most airy and appetizing trifles--of a make and coloring quite
metropolitan. She had flattened her gray curls against the window
for one deliberative moment; had then rushed in; and as soon as the
carrier's cart of Long Whindale, which she was now anxiously awaiting,
should have arrived, bearing with it the produce of that adventure,
Mrs. Thornburgh would be a proud woman, prepared to meet a legion
of rectors' wives without flinching. Not, indeed, in all respects
a woman at peace with herself and the world. In the country, where
every household should be self-contained, a certain discredit
attaches in every well-regulated mind to 'getting things in.' Mrs.
Thornburgh was also nervous at the thought of the bill. It would
have to be met gradually out of the weekly money. For 'William'
was to know nothing of the matter, except so far as a few magnificent
generalities and the testimony of his own dazzled eyes might inform
him. But after all, in this as in everything else, one must suffer
to be distinguished.

The carrier, however, lingered. And at last the drowsiness of the
afternoon overcame even those pleasing expectations we have described,
and Mrs. Thornburgh's newspaper dropped unheeded to her feet. The
vicarage, under the shade of which she was sitting, was a new
gray-stone building with wooden gables, occupying the site of what
had once been the earlier vicarage house of Long Whindale, the
primitive dwelling house of an incumbent, whose chapelry, after
sundry augmentations, amounted to just twenty-seven pounds a year.
The modern house, though it only contained sufficient accommodation
for Mr. and Mrs. Thornburgh, one guest and two maids, would have