echoes of Toad-Water with crescendo bursts of throat music which
compelled attention to her griefs. Mrs. Crick had a long family,
and was therefore licensed, in the eyes of her world, to have a
short temper, and when some of her ubiquitous offspring had informed
her, with the authority of eye-witnesses, that her neighbour had so
far forgotten herself as to heave stones at her hen--her best hen,
the best layer in the countryside--her thoughts clothed themselves
in language "unbecoming to a Christian woman"--so at least said Mrs.
Saunders, to whom most of the language was applied. Nor was she, on
her part, surprised at Mrs. Crick's conduct in letting her hens
stray into other body's gardens, and then abusing of them, seeing as
how she remembered things against Mrs. Crick--and the latter
simultaneously had recollections of lurking episodes in the past of
Susan Saunders that were nothing to her credit. "Fond memory, when
all things fade we fly to thee," and in the paling light of an April
afternoon the two women confronted each other from their respective
sides of the party wall, recalling with shuddering breath the blots
and blemishes of their neighbour's family record. There was that
aunt of Mrs. Crick's who had died a pauper in Exeter workhouse--
every one knew that Mrs. Saunders' uncle on her mother's side drank
himself to death--then there was that Bristol cousin of Mrs.
Crick's! From the shrill triumph with which his name was dragged
in, his crime must have been pilfering from a cathedral at least,
but as both remembrancers were speaking at once it was difficult to
distinguish his infamy from the scandal which beclouded the memory
of Mrs. Saunders' brother's wife's mother--who may have been a
regicide, and was certainly not a nice person as Mrs. Crick painted
her. And then, with an air of accumulating and irresistible
conviction, each belligerent informed the other that she was no
lady--after which they withdrew in a great silence, feeling that