Every parochial want that print and paper could supply was there met, with a convenience that bordered on luxury.
There was a good store, too, of sacred prints, illuminated texts, and oak frames, from which we carried back sundry additions to the garnishing of our room, besides presents for Jack, who was as fond of such things as we were.

Parish matters were, naturally, of perennial interest for us in our Vicarage home; but if ever they became a fad, it was about this period.
But it was to a completely new art that this visit finally led us, which I hardly know how to describe, unless as the art of dressmaking and general ornamentation.
The neighbourhood abounded with pretty clerical and country homes, where my cousins were intimate; each one, so it seemed to Eleanor and me, prettier than the last: sunshiny and homelike, with irregular comfortable furniture, dainty with chintz, or dark with aged oak, each room more tastefully besprinkled than the rest with old china, new books, music, sketches, needlework, and flowers.
"Do you know, Eleanor," said I, when we were dressing for dinner one evening before a toilette-table that had been tastefully adorned for our use by the daughters of the house, "I wonder if Yorkshire women _are_ as 'house-proud' as they call themselves?
I think our villagers are, in the important points of cleanliness and solid comfort, and of course we are at the Vicarage as to _that_--Keziah keeps us all like copper kettles; but don't you think we might have a little more house-pride about tasteful pretty refinements?
It perhaps is rather a waste of time arranging all these vases and baskets of flowers every day, but they are _very_ nice to look at, and I think it civilizes one." "_You're_ not to blame," said Eleanor decisively.

"You're south-country to the backbone, and French on the top.

It is we hard north-country folk, we business people, who neglect to cultivate 'the beautiful.' We're quite wrong.

But I think the beautiful is revenged on us," added she with one of her quick, bright looks, "by withdrawing itself.