The Bidding Wedding

MRS JUPP was enjoying her visit to Wales very much. 

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The weather M was clear and bright, and it was a pleasure to be with Mrs Jemima Hughes, a friend from her schooldays whom she had not seen in years.

"Another walk would be delightful," she said to Jemima on the Friday morning.

"The fresh air is doing wonders for my constitution already." Harriet Jupp lived in a city, and in 1831 Birmingham was smelly, busy and noisy.

Staying with Jemima was making her think that she might persuade Mr Jupp to

ask the bishop for a country parish, so they could move somewhere nicer.

The pace of life here was pleasant, and the people (all of them farming stock) appeared to be godly and - on the whole - humble in their manner and attitude.

"We will walk to the little wood up the hill," Jemima said.

"The lane is well made and I can show you the cottages along the way." Jemima was well-to-do.

She had married a landowner's son and had moved to this rural estate when he inherited.

Mr Hughes, Jemima said, employed many of the people whose cottages they would walk past.

"But not all of them are your husband's workers?" Harriet asked as they passed the first cottage.

"Oh, by no means," Jemima replied. "Many have a plot of their own." "Subsistence farming? My goodness, that is a hard life." Harriet had heard from her friend, over dinner the evening before, that a poorhouse was about to open in the nearby town.

She immediately made a subscription to it - she had a strong inclination towards charity and liked to do what she could to assist the deserving poor.

The new superintendent of the poorhouse, also a dinner guest at the Hughes home, had assured her that

they were all deserving.

They stopped to take a breath on their walk as the lane began to slope up.

As they stood there, a young man strode up to one of the cottages and stood outside its tiny yard.

"There's a pole across the gate," Harriet remarked.