CHAPTER VII.
MISS JEMIMA STANBURY, OF EXETER.
[Illustration] Miss Jemima Stanbury, the aunt of our friend Hugh, was a maiden lady, very much respected, indeed, in the city of Exeter.

It is to be hoped that no readers of these pages will be so un-English as to be unable to appreciate the difference between county society and town society,--the society, that is, of a provincial town, or so ignorant as not to know also that there may be persons so privileged, that although they live distinctly within a provincial town, there is accorded to them, as though by brevet rank, all the merit of living in the county.

In reference to persons so privileged, it is considered that they have been made free from the contamination of contiguous bricks and mortar by certain inner gifts, probably of birth, occasionally of profession, possibly of merit.

It is very rarely, indeed, that money alone will bestow this acknowledged rank; and in Exeter, which by the stringency and excellence of its well-defined rules on such matters, may perhaps be said to take the lead of all English provincial towns, money alone has never availed.
Good blood, especially if it be blood good in Devonshire, is rarely rejected.

Clergymen are allowed within the pale,--though by no means as certainly as used to be the case; and, indeed, in these days of literates, clergymen have to pass harder examinations than those ever imposed upon them by bishops' chaplains, before they are admitted ad eundem among the chosen ones of the city of Exeter.