18:27.] A Christmas Party. 49 



sion, and insisted so vehemently on his being unordered, that her asto- 

 nished husband, fairly out-talked and out-scolded, was fain to purchase a 

 quiet evening by a promise of obedience. Having carried this point, 

 she forthwith, according to the example of all pfudent wives, began an 

 attack on another, and, having compassed the unordering of Timothy, 

 began to bargain for uninviting her next neighbour, the widow Glen. 



Mrs. Martha Glen kept a baker's and chandler's shop in a wide lane, 

 known by the name of the Broadway, and adorned with a noble avenue 

 of oaks, terminating in the green whereon stood the Bell, a lane which, 

 by dint of two or three cottages peeping out from amongst the trees, and 

 two or three farm-houses, the smoke from whose chimneys sailed cur- 

 lingly amongst them, might, in comparison with that lonely nook, pass 

 for inhabited. Martha was a buxom widow, of about the same standing 

 with Mistress Frost. She had had her share of this world's changes, being 

 the happy relict of three several spouses; and was now a comely rosy 

 dame, with a laughing eye and a merry tongue. Why Hester should 

 hate Martha Glen was one of the puzzles of the parish. Hate her she 

 did, with that venemous and deadly hatred that never comes to words ; 

 and Martha repaid the obligation in kind, as much as a habitually genial 

 and relenting temper would allow, although certainly the balance of 

 aversion was much in favour of Mrs. Frost. An exceedingly smooth, 

 genteel, and civil hatred it was on both sides ; such an one as would 

 have done honour to a more polished society. They dealt with each 

 other, curtsied to each other, sate in the same pew at church, and 

 employed the same charwoman which last accordance, by the way, 

 may partly account for the long duration of discord between the parties. 

 Betty Clarke, the help in question, being a sharp, shrewish, vixenish 

 woman, with a positive taste for quarrels, who regularly reported every 

 cool inuendo uttered by the slow and soft-spoken Mrs. Frost, and every 

 hot retort elicited from the rash and hasty Martha, and contrived to 

 infuse her own spirit into each. With such an auxiliary on either side, 

 there could be no great wonder at the continuance of this animosity ; 

 how it began was still undecided. There were, indeed, rumours of an 

 early rivalry between the fair dames for the heart of a certain lame 

 shepherd, the first husband of Martha ; other reports assigned as a 

 reason the unlucky tricks of Tom Martin, the only son of Mrs. Glen by 

 her penultimate spouse, and the greatest pickle within twenty miles ; a 

 third party had, since the marriage, discovered the jealousy of Jacob to 

 be the proximate cause, Martha Glen having been long his constant cus- 

 tomer, dealing with him in all sorts of fishery and fruitery for herself and 

 her shop, from red-herrings to golden pippins ; whilst a fourth party, 

 still more scandalous, placed the jealousy to which they also attributed 

 the aversion, to the score of a young and strapping Scotch pedlar, 

 Simon Frazer by name, who travelled the country with muslins arid 

 cottons, and for whom certain malicious gossips asserted both ladies to 

 entertain a lacking penchant^ and whose insensibility towards the maiden 

 was said to have been -the real origin of her match with Jacob Frost, 

 whose proffer she had accepted out of spite. For my own part, I disbe- 

 lieve all and each of these stories, and hold it very hard that an innocent 

 woman cannot entertain a little harmless aversion towards her next 

 neighbour without being called to account for so natural a feeling. It 

 seems that Jacob thought so too for on Hester's conditioning that Mrs. 

 Glen should be excluded from the party, he just gave himself a wink 



M.M. New SmVs. VoL.III. No.13. H 



