The service concluded, Bolton found his guest awaiting him in the porch; and some ten minutes' sharp walking, with few remarks, except in admiration of the pertinacity of the rain, brought them home again to the cottage. A plain early dinner was discussed: there was no afternoon service; and the curate had just stepped into his kitchen to listen to some petition from a parishioner, when the stranger took the opportunity of retiring to his own apartment, and did not reappear until summoned to tea.
Bolton's visit to the kitchen had interrupted a most animated debate. In that lower house of his little commonwealth the new arrival had been a fruitful topic of discussion. The speakers were three: Molly, Sam, and Binns the wheelwright, who had looked in, as he said, on a little business with the parson. Molly, as has been said, was a rigid churchwoman. Her notions of her duty in that capacity might not have been unexceptionable, but they were, so far as the Sunday went, as follows: Church in the morning and afternoon, if practicable; as much reading as her eyes--not quite what they used to be--could comfortably manage; pudding for dinner, and tea and gossip in the evening. If fine, a walk would have come among the day's arrangements; but with the rain coming down as it did, and after having rather puzzled herself with a sermon upon the origin of evil, the sudden, and in a degree mysterious, visit of a strange gentleman--where visitors of any kind were so rare--became invaluable as a topic of interesting--for aught we know, of profitable--discourse. Sam Shears dined with her always on this day, and was allowed, not without scruples, to have his pipe in the chimney-corner; in consideration of which indulgence, he felt it his duty to make himself as agreeable as possible; and inasmuch as his stock-stories respecting enormous perch caught, or gifted starlings educated by him, Samuel Shears, had long ceased to interest--indeed had never much interested--his fair listener here, though they still went down, with variations, at the Crown and Thistle, he was reduced very often, in the absence of anything of modern interest stirring in the neighbouring town of S----, to keep up his credit as a "rare good companion," by entering into politics--for which study, next to divinity, Molly had a decided taste--talking about reforms and revolutions in a manner that Molly declared made her "creep," and varying this pleasurable excitement by gloomy forebodings with regard to"Rooshia and Prooshia."