Emily nearly cried at
their cruelty. Martyn was called off by my mother, and set down,
half sulky, half ashamed, to Henry and his Bearer; and Griff, vowing
that he believed it was that brute who made the row at night, and
that she ought to be exterminated, strolled off to converse with
Chapman, who was a quaint compound of clerk and keeper--in the one
capacity upholding his late master, in the other bemoaning Mr.
Mears' unpunctualities, specially as regarded weddings and funerals;
one 'corp' having been kept waiting till a messenger had been sent
to Wattlesea, who finding both clergy out for the day, had had to go
to Hillside, 'where they was always ready, though the old Squire
would have been mad with him if he'd a-guessed one of they Fordys
had ever set foot in the parish.'
The only school in the place was close to the meeting-house, 'a very
dame's school indeed,' as Emily described it after a peep on Monday.
Dame Dearlove, the old woman who presided, was a picture of
Shenstone's schoolmistress,--black bonnet, horn spectacles, fearful
birch rod, three-cornered buff 'kerchief, checked apron and all, but
on meddling with her, she proved a very dragon, the antipodes of her
name. Tattered copies of the Universal Spelling-Book served her
aristocracy, ragged Testaments the general herd, whence all appeared
to be shouting aloud at once.
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