Either in reward of such virtue, or according to some more hidden law of sequence, Mr. Freely’s business, in spite of prejudice, started under favourable auspices.  For Mrs. Chaloner, the rector’s wife, was among the earliest customers at the shop, thinking it only right to encourage a new parishioner who had made a decorous appearance at church; and she found Mr. Freely a most civil, obliging young man, and intelligent to a surprising degree for a confectioner; well-principled, too, for in giving her useful hints about choosing sugars he had thrown much light on the dishonesty of other tradesmen.  Moreover, he had been in the West Indies, and had seen the very estate which had been her poor grandfather’s property; and he said the missionaries were the only cause of the negro’s discontent—­an observing young man, evidently.  Mrs. Chaloner ordered wine-biscuits and olives, and gave Mr. Freely to understand that she should find his shop a great convenience.  So did the doctor’s wife, and so did Mrs. Gate, at the large carding-mill, who, having high connexions frequently visiting her, might be expected to have a large consumption of ratafias and macaroons.

The less aristocratic matrons of Grimworth seemed likely at first to justify their husbands’ confidence that they would never pay a percentage of profits on drop-cakes, instead of making their own, or get up a hollow show of liberal housekeeping by purchasing slices of collared meat when a neighbour came in for supper.  But it is my task to narrate the gradual corruption of Grimworth manners from their primitive simplicity—­a melancholy task, if it were not cheered by the prospect of the fine peripateia or downfall by which the progress of the corruption was ultimately checked.

It was young Mrs. Steene, the veterinary surgeons wife, who first gave way to temptation.  I fear she had been rather over-educated for her station in life, for she knew by heart many passages in Lalla Rookh, the Corsair, and the Siege of Corinth, which had given her a distaste for domestic occupations, and caused her a withering disappointment at the discovery that Mr. Steene, since his marriage, had lost all interest in the “bulbul,” openly preferred discussing the nature of spavin with a coarse neighbour, and was angry if the pudding turned out watery—­indeed, was simply a top-booted “vet.”, who came in hungry at dinner-time; and not in the least like a nobleman turned Corsair out of pure scorn for his race, or like a renegade with a turban and crescent, unless it were in the irritability of his temper.  And scorn is such a very different thing in top-boots!