; but a catalogue raisonné of names makes but a dull chapter.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PRINCIPAL PERSON IN THE VILLAGE.—THE VICAR'S FAMILY.

Two days after the Mowbray family appeared at church, the village gentry began to offer their visits of condolence, which, happily however for the tranquillity of the persons chiefly concerned, were performed in the improved manner of modern times; that is to say, every allusion to the recent event being by all but their intimate friends most cautiously avoided by all parties.

The first person who entered the drawing-room was Mrs. Simpson. On all occasions, indeed, this lady exerted herself to sustain the position of "the principal person in the village." She seldom gave an order for "the fly," which, weak as were its own springs, was, in truth, the main-spring of all the rural visitings; she seldom ordered this indispensable commodity without adding to her instructions, "Pray be punctual, Mr. Sims,—I say this for your sake as well as my own; for if the principal person in the village is made to wait, you may depend upon it an opposition will be started immediately, and in that case, you know, I should be obliged to give it my patronage." In like manner, the butcher and baker in the village, the ruddy-faced milkman out of it, the shoemaker, the dressmaker, the carpenter, the glazier, the dealer in small wares and all wares, were severally and collectively given to understand that Mrs. Simpson, as the principal person in the village, had a right to expect the first-fruits of their civility, attention, industry, and general stock-in-trade.

Her entrance into the presence of Mrs. Mowbray was as pregnant with sentiment and sympathy as the degree of intimacy to which she was admitted would permit. The hand-shaking was performed with a little pressure and a little sigh; every pause in the conversation was made to speak volumes by the sad tone in which the next sentence was spoken: in short, if the minds of Mrs. Mowbray, her eldest daughter, and her ward, who kindly volunteered to sustain this ordeal with her, had not been fully occupied by the recent event, almost every word, look, and gesture of the principal person of Wrexhill were calculated to recall it.

Mrs. Simpson was accompanied by her pretty little girl, flowered and furbelowed into as near a resemblance to a bantam chicken as it was possible for a pretty little girl to take.

The distance from the village