The larger and better is the parsonage in which lived the parson and his
daughter; and the smaller is the freehold residence of a certain Miss Le
Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres which was rented by one
Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
house which she managed herself, regarding herself to be quite as great
in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of
cider. 'But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,' Farmer Cloysey would say, when
Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too
defiant. 'Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn't do it.' Miss Le Smyrger was
an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty
acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age,
a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under
the sun.
And now for the parson and his daughter. The parson's name was
Woolsworthy--or Woolathy as it was pronounced by all those who lived
around him--the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
those parts.
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