'But, papa,' said Miss Tubbs, 'you know Mrs Hopgood's maiden name; we

found that out. It was Molyneux.'

'Of course, my dear, of course; but if she was a Frenchwoman resident

in England she would prefer to assume an English name, that is to say

if she wished to be married.'

Occasionally the Miss Hopgoods were encountered, and they confounded

Fenmarket sorely. On one memorable occasion there was a party at the

Rectory: it was the annual party into which were swept all the

unclassifiable odds-and-ends which could not be put into the two

gatherings which included the aristocracy and the democracy of the

place. Miss Clara Hopgood amazed everybody by 'beginning talk,' by

asking Mrs Greatorex, her hostess, who had been far away to Sidmouth

for a holiday, whether she had been to the place where Coleridge was

born, and when the parson's wife said she had not, and that she could

not be expected to make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of an infidel,

Miss Hopgood expressed her surprise, and declared she would walk

twenty miles any day to see Ottery St Mary. Still worse, when

somebody observed that an Anti-Corn-Law lecturer was coming to

Fenmarket, and the parson's daughter cried 'How horrid!' Miss

Hopgood talked again, and actually told the parson that, so far as

she had read upon the subject--fancy her reading about the Corn-

Laws!--the argument was all one way, and that after Colonel Thompson

nothing new could really be urged.

'What is so--' she was about to say 'objectionable,' but she

recollected her official position and that she was bound to be

politic--'so odd and unusual,' observed Mrs Greatorex to Mrs Tubbs

afterwards, 'is not that Miss Hopgood should have radical views. Mrs

Barker, I know, is a radical like her husband, but then she never

puts herself forward, nor makes speeches. I never saw anything quite

like it, except once in London at a dinner-party. Lady Montgomery

then went on in much the same way, but she was a baronet's wife; the

baronet was in Parliament; she received a good deal and was obliged

to entertain her guests.'

Poor Clara! she was really very unobtrusive and very modest, but

there had been constant sympathy between her and her father, not the

dumb sympathy as between man and dog, but that which can manifest

itself in human fashion.




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