608 A Provincial Reputation. [Dec. 



" Fitting the caps on themselves ?" 



The little scarecrow shook his head once more; and declaring we 

 should see he had spoken too true, departed, and then lamented so 

 fluently to every body the certainty of our being cut, that every body 

 began to believe him. 



I have hinted that my bonnets and my husband's plate occasioned 

 heart-burnings ; no — that is not a correct term, the heart has nothing to 

 do with such exhalations — bile collects elsewhere. 



Those who had conspired to pull my husband from the throne of his 

 popularity, because their parties excited in us no jm}ii/ spirit, and we 

 abstained from hopping at their hops, found, to their consternation, that 

 when the novelty of my novel misdemeanor was at an end, we went on 

 as if nothing had occurred. However, they still possessed heaven's best 

 gift, the use of their tongues, and they said of us every thing bad which 

 they knew to be false, and which they wished to see realized. 



Their forlorn hope was our •■' extravagance." " Never mind," said 

 one, " Christmas must come round, and then we shall see." 



When once the match of insinuation is applied to the train of rumoured 

 difficulties, the suspicion that has been smouldering for a wliile, bounces 

 at once into a report, and very shortly its echo is bounced in every parlour 

 in a provincial town. 



Long bills, that had been accustomed to wait for payment till Christ- 

 mas, now lay on my table at midsummer ; and tradesmen, who drove 

 dennetts to cottages once every evening, sent short civil notes, regretting 

 their utter inability to make up a sum of money by Saturday night, 

 unless / favoured them by the bearer with the sum of ten pounds, " the 

 amount of my little account." 



Dennett-driving drapers, actually threatened to fail for the want of 

 ten pounds ! — pastry-cooks, who took their families regularly " to 

 summer at the sea," assisted the co^«^<er-plot, and prematurely dunned 

 my husband ! 



It is not always convenient to pay sums at midsummer, which we had 

 been in the habit of paying at Christmas ; if, however, a single applicant 

 was refused, a new rumour of inability was started, and hunted through 

 the town before night. People walked by our house looking up wist- 

 fully at the windows, others peeped down the area to see what we had for 

 dinner; one gentleman went to our butcher to inquire how much we 

 owed him; and one lady narrowly escaped a legal action, because when 

 she saw a few pipkins lying on the counter of a crockery-ware man, 

 directed to me, she incautiously said, in the hearing of one of my servants, 

 "Are you paid for your pipkins.-* — ah, its wellif you ever get your money!" 



Christmas came at last, bills were paid, and my husband did not OAve a 

 shilling in Pumpington Wells. Like the old ladies in the besieged city, 

 the gossips looked at us, wondering when the havoc would begin. 



He who mounts the ladder of life, treading step by step upon the 

 identical footings marked out, may live in a provincial town. When we 

 want to drink spa waters, or vary the scene, we now visit watering 

 places ; but rather than force me to live at one again, " stick me up," as 

 Andrew Pairservice says, in Rob Roy, " as a regimental target for ball- 

 practice." We have long ceased to live at Pumpington. 



Fleeting are the tints of the rainbow — perishable the leaf of the rose — 

 variable the love of woman — uncertain the sunbeam of April ; but nought 

 on earth can be so fleeting, so perishable, so variable, or so uncertain, as 

 the popularity of a provincial reputation. 



T. H. B. 



