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198 Miss Monro had much more to say to him. She questioned him right and left whenever Ellinor was out of the room. She learnt that the house at Ford Bank was splendidly furnished, and no money spared on the garden; that the eldest Miss Hanbury was very well married; that Brown had succeeded to Jones in the haberdasher’s shop. Then she hesitated a little before making her next inquiry:

“I suppose Mr. Corbet never comes to the parsonage now?”

“No, not he. I don’t think as how Mr. Ness would have him; but they write letters to each other by times. Old Job—you’ll recollect old Job, ma’am, he that gardened for Mr Ness, and waited in the parlour when there was company—did say as one day he heerd them speaking about Mr. Corbet; and he’s a grand counsellor now—one of them as goes about at assize-time, and speaks in a wig.”

“A barrister, you mean,” said Miss Monro.

“Ay; and he’s something more than that, though I can’t rightly remember what,”

Ellinor could have told them both. They had The Times lent to them on the second day after publication by one of their friends in the Close, and Ellinor, watching till Miss Monro’s eyes were otherwise engaged, always turned with trembling hands and a beating heart to the reports of the various courts