Indeed, Mr.Prosper, who was a sickly little man about fifty years of age, always spoke of himself as though he intended to live for another half-century.

He rarely walked across the park to the rectory, and once a week, on Sundays, entertained the rectory family.

A sad occasion it generally was to the elder of the rectory children, who were thus doomed to abandon the loud pleasantries of their own home for the sober Sunday solemnities of the Hall.

It was not that the Squire of Buston was peculiarly a religious man, or that the rector was the reverse: but the parson was joyous, whereas the other was solemn.

The squire,--who never went to church, because he was supposed to be ill,--made up for the deficiency by his devotional tendencies when the children were at the Hall.