Poor Relations Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  "I've got too many caps, Mrs. Worfolk," John proclaimed next morning tohis housekeeper. "You can give this one away."

  "Yes, sir. Who would you like it given to?"

  "Oh, anybody, anybody. Tramps very often ask for old boots, don't they?Some tramp might like it."

  "Would you have any erbjections if I give it to my nephew, sir?"

  "None whatever."

  "It seems almost too perky for a tramp, sir; and my sister's boy--well,he's just at the age when they like to dress theirselves up a bit. He'sdoing very well, too. His employers is extremely satisfied with the wayhe's doing. Extremely satisfied, his employers are."

  "I'm delighted to hear it."

  "Yes, sir. Well, it's been some consolation to my poor sister, I mean tosay, after the way her husband behaved hisself, and it's to be hopedHerbert'll take fair warning. Let me see, you _will_ be having lunch athome I think you said?"

  John winced: this was precisely what he would have avoided by catchingthe 9:05 at Waterloo last night.

  "I shan't be in to lunch for a few days, Mrs. Worfolk, no--er--nor todinner either as a matter of fact. No--in fact I'll be down in thecountry. I must see after things there, you know," he added with anattempt to suggest as jovially as possible a real anxiety about his newhouse.

  "The country, oh yes," repeated Mrs. Worfolk grimly; John saw thebeech-woods round Ambles blasted by his housekeeper's disapproval.

  "You wouldn't care to--er--come down and give a look round yourself,Mrs. Worfolk? My sister, Mrs. Curtis--"

  "Oh, I should prefer not to intrude in any way, sir. But if you insist,why, of course--"

  "Oh no, I don't insist," John hurriedly interposed.

  "No, sir. Well, we shall all have to get used to being left alonenowadays, and that's all there is to it."

  "But I shall be back in a few days, Mrs. Worfolk. I'm a Cockney atheart, you know. Just at first--"

  Mrs. Worfolk shook her head and waddled tragically to the door.

  "There's nothing else you'll be wanting this morning, sir?" she turnedto ask in accents that seemed to convey forgiveness of her master inspite of everything.

  "No, thank you, Mrs. Worfolk. Please send Maud up to help me pack. Goodheavens," he added to himself when his housekeeper had left the room,"why shouldn't I be allowed a country house? And I suppose the nextthing is that James and Beatrice and George and Eleanor will all beoffended because I didn't go tearing round to see them the moment Iarrived. One's relations never understand that after the production of aplay one requires a little rest. Besides, I must get on with my newplay. I absolutely _must_."

  John's tendency to abhor the vacuum of success was corrected by thearrival of Maud, the parlor-maid, whose statuesque anemia and impersonalneatness put something in it. Before leaving for America he hadsupplemented the rather hasty preliminary furnishing of his new house byordering from his tailor a variety of country costumes. These Maud, withfeminine intuition superimposed on what she would have called her"understanding of valeting," at once produced for his visit to Ambles;John in the prospect of half a dozen unworn peat-perfumed suits of tweedflung behind him any lingering doubt about there being something insuccess, and with the recapture of his enthusiasm for what he called"jolly things" was anxious that Maud should share in it.

  "Do you think these new things are a success, Maud?" he asked, perhaps alittle too boisterously. At any rate, the parlor-maid's comprehension ofvaleting had apparently never been so widely stretched, for a faintcoralline blush tinted her waxen cheeks.

  "They seem very nice, sir," she murmured, with a slight stress upon theverb.

  John felt that he had trespassed too far upon the confines of Maud'shumanity and retreated hurriedly. He would have liked to explain thathis inquiry had merely been a venture into abstract esthetics and thathe had not had the least intention of extracting her opinion about thesesuits _on him_; but he felt that an attempt at explanation wouldembarrass her, and he hummed instead over a selection of ties, as a beehums from flower to flower in a garden, careless of the gardener whoclose at hand is potting up plants.

  "I will take these ties," he announced on the last stave of _A Fine OldEnglish Gentleman_.

  Maud noted them gravely.

  "And I shall have a few books. Perhaps there won't be room for them?"

  "There won't be room for them, not in your dressing-case, sir."

  "Oh, I know there won't be room in that," said John, bitterly.

  His dressing-case might be considered the medal he had struck in honorof _The Fall of Babylon_: he had passed it every morning on his way torehearsals and, dreaming of the triumph that might soon be his, hadvowed he would buy it were such a triumph granted. It had cost L75, washeavy enough when empty to strain his wrist and when full to break hisback, and it contained more parasites of the toilet table and thewriting desk than one could have supposed imaginable. These parasiteseach possessed an abode of such individual shape that leaving thembehind made no difference to the number of really useful articles, likepajamas, that could be carried in the cubic space lined with bluecorded silk on which they looked down like the inconvenient houses of afashionable square. Therefore wherever John went, the fittings went too,a glittering worthless mob of cut-glass, pigskin, tortoiseshell andivory.

  "But in my portmanteau," John persisted. "Won't there be room there?"

  "I might squeeze them in," Maud admitted. "It depends what boots you'rewanting to take with you, sir."

  "Never mind," he sighed. "I can make a separate parcel of them."

  "There's the basket what we were going to use for the cat, sir."

  "No, I should prefer a brown paper parcel," he decided. It would beimproper for the books out of which the historical trappings of his_Joan of Arc_ were to be manufactured to travel in a lying-in hospitalfor cats.

  John left Maud to finish the packing and went downstairs to his library.This double room of fine proportions was, as one might expect from thelibrary of a popular writer, the core--the veritable omphalos of thehouse; with its fluted pilasters, cream-colored panels andcherub-haunted ceiling, the expanse of city and sky visible from threesedate windows at the south end and the glimpse of a busy Hampsteadstreet caught from those facing north, not to speak of the prismaticrows of books, it was a room worthy of art's most remunerative triumphs,the nursery of inspiration, and, save for a slight suggestion that theMuses sometimes drank afternoon tea there, the room of an indomitablebachelor. When John stepped upon the wreaths, ribbons, and full-blownroses of the threadbare Aubusson rug that floated like gossamer upon agreen carpet of Axminster pile as soft as some historic lawn, he wassure that success was not a vacuum. In his now optimistic mood he hopedultimately to receive from Ambles the kind of congratulatory benedictionthat the library at Church Row always bestowed upon his footsteps.Indeed, if he had not had such an ambition for his country house, hecould scarcely have endured to quit even for a week this library, wherefires were burning in two grates and where the smoke of his Partaga washaunting, like a complacent ghost, the imperturbable air. John possessedanother library at Ambles, but he had not yet had time to do more thanhurriedly stock it with the standard works that he felt no country houseshould be without. His library in London was the outcome of historicalresearch preparatory to writing his romantic plays; and since all worksof popular historical interest are bound with a much more lavishprofusion of color and ornament even than the works of fiction to whichthey most nearly approximate, John's shelves outwardly resembled rathera collection of armor than a collection of books. There were, of course,many books the insides of which were sufficiently valuable to excusetheir dingy exterior; but none of these occupied the line, where romanceafter romance of exiled queens, confession after confession ofmorganatic wives, memoir after memoir from above and below stairs,together with catch-penny alliterative gatherings as of rude regents andlibidinous landgraves flashed in a gorgeous superficiality of gilt andtext. In order to amass the necessary material for a pl
ay about Joan ofArc John did not concern himself with original documents. He assumed,perhaps rightly, that a Camembert cheese is more palatable and certainlymore portable than a herd of unmilked cows. To dramatize the life ofJoan of Arc he took from his shelves _Saints and Sinners of theFifteenth Century_ ... but a catalogue is unnecessary: enough that whenthe heap of volumes chosen stood upon his desk it glittered like theMaid herself before the walls of Orleans.

  "After all," as John had once pointed out in a moment of exasperation tohis brother, James, the critic, "Shakespeare didn't sit all day in thereading-room of the British Museum."

  An hour later the playwright, equipped alike for country rambles andpoetic excursions, was sitting in a first-class compartment of a Londonand South-Western railway train; two hours after that he was sitting inthe Wrottesford fly swishing along between high hazel hedges ofgolden-brown.

  "I shall have to see about getting a dog-cart," he exclaimed, when aftera five minutes' struggle to let down the window with the aid of a strapthat looked like an Anglican stole he had succeeded in opening the doorand nearly falling head-long into the lane.

  "You have to let down the window _before_ you get out," said the driverreproachfully, trying to hammer the frameless window back into place andmaking such a noise about it that John could not bear to accentuate byargument the outrage that he was offering to this morning of exquisitedecline, on which earth seemed to be floating away into a windlessinfinity like one of her own dead leaves. No, on such a morningcontroversy was impossible, but he should certainly take immediate stepsto acquire a dog-cart.

  "For it's like being jolted in a badly made coffin," he thought, when hewas once more encased in the fly and, having left the high road behind,was driving under an avenue of sycamores bordered by a small stream, thewater of which was stained to the color of sherry by the sunlightglowing down through the arches of tawny leaves overhead. To John thisavenue always seemed the entrance to a vast park surrounding his countryhouse; it was indeed an almost unfrequented road, grass-grown in thecenter and lively with rabbits during most of the day, so that hisimagination of ancestral approaches was easily stimulated and he feltlike a figure in a painting by Marcus Stone. It was lucky that John'ssanguine imagination could so often satisfy his ambition; prosperousplaywright though he was, he had not yet made nearly enough money to buya real park. However, in his present character of an eighteenth-centurysquire he determined, should the film version of _The Fall of Babylon_turn out successful, to buy a lawny meadow of twenty acres that wouldadd much to the dignity and seclusion of Ambles, the boundaries of whichat the back were now overlooked by a herd of fierce Kerry cows whooccupied the meadow and during the summer had made John's practiceshots with a brassy too much like big-game shooting to be pleasant orsafe. After about a mile the avenue came to an end where a narrow curvedbridge spanned the stream, which now flowed away to the left along thebottom of a densely wooded hillside. The fly crossed over with animpunity that was surprising in face of a printed warning thatextraordinary vehicles should avoid this bridge, and began to climb theslope by a wide diagonal track between bushes of holly, the green ofwhich seemed vivid and glossy against the prevailing brown. The noise ofthe wheels was deadened by the heavy drift of beech leaves, and thestillness of this russet world, except for the occasional scream of ajay or the flapping of disturbed pigeons, demanded from John'sillustrative fancy something more remote and Gothic than the eighteenthcentury.

  "Malory," he said to himself. "Absolute Malory. It's almost impossiblenot to believe that Sir Gawaine might not come galloping down throughthis wood."

  Eager to put himself still more deeply in accord with the romanticatmosphere, John tried this time to open the door of the fly with theintention of walking meditatively up the hill in its wake; the doorremained fast; but he managed to open the window, or rather he broke it.

  "I've a jolly good mind to get a motor," he exclaimed, savagely.

  Every knight errant's horse in the neighborhood bolted at the thought,and by the time John had reached the top of the hill and emerged upon awide stretch of common land dotted with ancient hawthorns in fullcrimson berry he was very much in the present. For there on the otherside of the common, flanked by shelving woods of oak and beech andbacked by rising downs on which a milky sky ruffled its breast like ahuge swan lazily floating, stood Ambles, a solitary, deep-hued,Elizabethan house with dreaming chimney-stacks and tumbled mossy roofsand garden walls rising from the heaped amethysts of innumerableMichaelmas daisies.

  "My house," John murmured in a paroxysm of ownership.

  The noise of the approaching fly had drawn expectant figures to thegate; John, who had gratified affection, curiosity and ostentation bysending a wireless message from the _Murmania_, a telegram fromLiverpool yesterday, and another from Euston last night to announce hisswift arrival, had therefore only himself to thank for perceiving in thegroup the black figure of his brother-in-law, the Reverend LaurenceArmitage. He drove away the scarcely formed feeling of depression bysupposing that Edith could not by herself have trundled thebarrel-shaped vicarage pony all the way from Newton Candover to Ambles,and, finding that the left-hand door of the fly was unexpectedlysusceptible to the prompting of its handle, he alighted with suchrapidity that not one of his smiling relations could have had anyimpression but that he was bounding to greet them. The two sisters wereso conscious of their rich unmarried brother's impulsive advance thateach incited her own child to responsive bounds so that they might meethim half-way along the path to the front door, in the harborage of whichGrandma (whose morning nap had been interrupted by a sudden immersion intwo shawls, and a rapid swim with Emily, the maid from London, acting aslifebuoy down the billowy passages and stairs of the old house) rockedin breathless anticipation of the filial salute.

  "Welcome back, my dear Johnnie," the old lady panted.

  "How are you, mother? What, another new cap?"

  Old Mrs. Touchwood patted her head complacently. "We bought it atThreadgale's in Galton. The ribbons are the new hollyhock red."

  "Delightful!" John exclaimed. "And who helped you to choose it? LittleFrida here?"

  "Nobody _helped_ me, Johnnie. Hilda accompanied me into Galton; but shewanted to buy a sardine-opener for the house."

  John had not for a moment imagined that his mother had wanted anyadvice about a cap; but inasmuch as Frida, in what was intended to be ademonstrative welcome, prompted by her mother, was rubbing her headagainst his ribs like a calf against a fence, he had felt he ought tohook her to the conversation somehow. John's concern about Frida wassolved by the others' gathering round him for greetings.

  First Hilda offered her sallow cheek, patting while he kissed it herbrother on the back with one hand, and with the other manipulatingHarold in such a way as to give John the impression that his nephew wasbeing forced into his waistcoat pocket.

  "He feels you're his father now," whispered Hilda with a look that wasmeant to express the tender resignation of widowhood, but which onlysucceeded in suggesting a covetous maternity. John doubted if Haroldfelt anything but a desire to escape from being sandwiched between hismother's crape and his uncle's watch chain, and he turned to embraceEdith, whose cheeks, soft and pink as a toy balloon, were floatingtremulously expectant upon the glinting autumn air.

  "We've been so anxious about you," Edith murmured. "And Laurence hassuch a lot to talk over with you."

  John, with a slight sinking that was not altogether due to its beingpast his usual luncheon hour, turned to be welcomed by hisbrother-in-law.

  The vicar of Newton Candover's serenity if he had not been a tall andhandsome man might have been mistaken for smugness; as it was, hispersonality enveloped the scene with a ceremonious dignity that was notless than archidiaconal, and except for his comparative youthfulness (hewas the same age as John) might well have been consideredarchiepiscopal.

  "Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxiousabout you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweetdam
p odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while theleaves fluttering gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of thelawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.

  "I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having forsome time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentencein a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed theannouncement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of reliefwith which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymnannounced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall waswelcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundayshandicapped by the litany.

  "Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastilycramming his mouth with slugs.

  "Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don'teat sweets just before lunch."

  "Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm noteating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."

  "Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.

  Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from hismouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leavesfrom an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody feltglad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robincocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.

  "And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought asecond shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. Hisbedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decidedthat it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that ofa well-recommended country inn.

  "Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a goodmonth here and break the back of Joan of Arc."

  "What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired.John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.

  "What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was theright tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who wasexamining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin ofa white elephant."

  "But it's brown," Harold objected.

  John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness.

  "Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just aslobsters turn red when they're boiled."

  "Who shot it?"

  "Oh, I don't know--probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps theshop where I bought it."

  "When?"

  "Well, I can't exactly say when--but probably about three years ago."

  "Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?"

  "Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants."

  "Perhaps he shot this one."

  "Perhaps he did."

  "Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you boughtit?"

  "I shouldn't be surprised," said John.

  "Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer.When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friendswith shopkeepers."

  "Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for hisnailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maudknew.

  "What are you looking for, Uncle John?" Harold asked.

  "I'm looking for my nailbrush, Harold."

  "Why?"

  "To clean my nails."

  "Are they dirty?"

  "Well, they're just a little grubby after the railway journey."

  "Mine aren't," Harold affirmed in a lofty tone. Then after a minute headded: "I thought perhaps you were looking for the present you broughtme from America."

  John turned pale and made up his mind to creep unobserved after lunchinto the market town of Galton and visit the local toyshop. It would bean infernal nuisance, but it served him right for omitting to bringpresents either for his nephew or his niece.

  "You're too smart," he said nervously to Harold. "Present time will beafter tea." The sentence sounded contradictory somehow, and he changedit to "the time for presents will be five o'clock."

  "Why?" Harold asked.

  John was saved from answering by a tap at the door, followed by theentrance of Mrs. Curtis.

  "Oh, Harold's with you?" she exclaimed, as if it were the mostsurprising juxtaposition in the world.

  "Yes, Harold's with me," John agreed.

  "You mustn't let him bother you, but he's been so looking forward toyour arrival. _When_ is Uncle coming, he kept asking."

  "Did he ask _why_ I was coming?"

  Hilda looked at her brother blankly, and John made up his mind to trythat look on Harold some time.

  "Have you got everything you want?" she asked, solicitously.

  "He hasn't got his nailbrush," said Harold.

  Hilda assumed an expression of exaggerated alarm.

  "Oh dear, I hope it hasn't been lost."

  "No, no, no, it'll turn up in one of the glass bottles. I was justtelling Harold that I haven't really begun my unpacking yet."

  "Uncle John's brought me a present from America," Harold proclaimed inaccents of greedy pride.

  Hilda seized her brother's hand affectionately.

  "Now you oughtn't to have done that. It's spoiling him. It really is.Harold never expects presents."

  "What a liar," thought John. "But not a bigger one than I am myself," hesupplemented, and then he announced aloud that he must go into Galtonafter lunch and send off an important telegram to his agent.

  "I wonder ..." Hilda began, but with an arch look she paused and seemedto thrust aside temptation.

  "What?" John weakly asked.

  "Why ... but no, he might bore you by walking too slowly. Harold," sheadded, seriously, "if Uncle John is kind enough to take you into Galtonwith him, will you be a good boy and leave your butterfly net at home?"

  "If I may take my air-gun," Harold agreed.

  John rapidly went over in his mind the various places where Harold mightbe successfully detained while he was in the toyshop, decided that therisk would be too great, pulled himself together, and declined thepleasure of his nephew's company on the ground that he must think oververy carefully the phrasing of the telegram he had to send, a mentalprocess, he explained, that Harold might distract.

  "Another day, darling," said Hilda, consolingly.

  "And then I'll be able to take my fishing-rod," said Harold.

  "He is so like his poor father," Hilda murmured.

  John was thinking sympathetically of the distant Amazonian tribe thathad murdered Daniel Curtis, when there was another tap at the door, andFrida crackling loudly in a clean pinafore came in to say that the bellfor lunch was just going to ring.

  "Yes, dear," said her aunt. "Uncle John knows already. Don't bother himnow. He's tired after his journey. Come along, Harold."

  "He can have my nailbrush if he likes," Harold offered.

  "Run, darling, and get it quickly then."

  Harold rushed out of the room and could be heard hustling his cousin alldown the corridor, evoking complaints of "Don't, Harold, you rough boy,you're crumpling my frock."

  The bell for lunch sounded gratefully at this moment, and John, withouteven washing his hands, hurried downstairs trying to look like a hungryogre, so anxious was he to avoid using Harold's nailbrush.

  The dining-room at Ambles was a long low room with a large openfireplace and paneled walls; from the window-seats bundles of dryinglavender competed pleasantly with the smell of hot kidney-beans upon thetable, at the head of which John took his rightful place; opposite tohim, placid as an untouched pudding, sat Grandmama. Laurence said gracewithout being invited after standing up for a moment with an expressionof pained interrogation; Edith accompanied his words by making with herforefinger and thumb a minute cruciform incision between two of thebones of her stays, and inclined her head solemnly toward Frida in amute exhortation to follow her mother's example. Harold flashed hisspectacles upon every dish in turn; Emily's waiting was during this mealof reunion colored with hu
man affection.

  "Well, I'm glad to be back in England," said John, heartily.

  An encouraging murmur rippled round the table from his relations.

  "Are these French beans from our own garden?" John asked presently.

  "Scarlet-runners," Hilda corrected. "Yes, of course. We never troublethe greengrocer. The frosts have been so light ..."

  "I haven't got a bean left," said Laurence.

  John nearly gave a visible jump; there was something terribly suggestivein that simple horticultural disclaimer.

  "Our beans are quite over," added Edith in the astonished voice of onewho has tumbled upon a secret of nature. She had a habit of echoing manyof her husband's remarks like this; perhaps "echoing" is a baddescription of her method, for she seldom repeated literally and oftennot immediately. Sometimes indeed she would wait as long as half an hourbefore she reissued in the garb of a personal philosophical discoveryor of an exegitical gloss the most casual remark of Laurence, a habitwhich irritated him and embarrassed other people, who would look awayfrom Edith and mutter a hurried agreement or ask for the salt to bepassed.

  "I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "that beans were a favorite dishof poor Papa, though I myself always liked peas better."

  "I like peas," Harold proclaimed.

  "I like peas, too," cried Frida excitedly.

  "Frida," said her father, pulling out with a click one of the gravertenor stops in his voice, "we do not talk at table about our likes anddislikes."

  Edith indorsed this opinion with a grave nod at Frida, or rather with asolemn inclination of the head as if she were bowing to an altar.

  "But I like new potatoes best of all," continued Harold. "My gosh, allbuttery!"

  Laurence screwed up his eye in a disgusted wince, looked down his noseat his plate, and drew a shocked cork from his throat.

  "Hush," said Hilda. "Didn't you hear what Uncle Laurence said, darling?"

  She spoke as one speaks to children in church when the organ begins; onefelt that she was inspired by social tact rather than by any realreverence for the clergyman.

  "Well, I do like new potatoes, and I like asparagus."

  Frida was just going to declare for asparagus, too, when she caught herfather's eye and choked.

  "Evidently the vegetable that Frida likes best," said John, ridingbuoyantly upon the gale of Frida's convulsions, "is an artichoke."

  It is perhaps lucky for professional comedians that rich uncles andjudges rarely go on the stage; their occupation might be even morearduous if they had to face such competitors. Anyway, John had enoughsuccess with his joke to feel much more hopeful of being able to findsuitable presents in Galton for Harold and Frida; and in the silence ofexhaustion that succeeded the laughter he broke the news of his havingto go into town and dispatch an urgent telegram that very afternoon,mentioning incidentally that he might see about a dog-cart, and, ofcourse, at the same time a horse. Everybody applauded his resolve excepthis brother-in-law who looked distinctly put out.

  "But you won't be gone before I get back?" John asked.

  Laurence and Edith exchanged glances fraught with the unutteredsolemnities of conjugal comprehension.

  "Well, I _had_ wanted to have a talk over things with you after lunch,"Laurence explained. "In fact, I have a good deal to talk over. I shouldsuggest driving you in to Galton, but I find it impossible to talkfreely while driving. Even our poor old pony has been known to shy. Yes,indeed, poor old Primrose often shies."

  John mentally blessed the aged animal's youthful heart, and said, tocover his relief, that old maids were often more skittish than youngones.

  "Why?" asked Harold.

  Everybody felt that Harold's question was one that should not beanswered.

  "You wouldn't understand, darling," said his mother; and the dining-roombecame tense with mystery.

  "Of course, if we could have dinner put forward half an hour," saidLaurence, dragging the conversation out of the slough of sex, "we couldavail ourselves of the moon."

  "Yes, you see," Edith put in eagerly, "it wouldn't be so dark with themoon."

  Laurence knitted his brow at this and his wife hastened to add that anearlier dinner would bring Frida's bed-time much nearer to its normalhour.

  "The point is that I have a great deal to talk over with John," Laurenceirritably explained, "and that," he looked as if he would have liked toadd "Frida's bed-time can go to the devil," but he swallowed the impiousdedication and crumbled his bread.

  Finally, notwithstanding that everybody felt very full of roast beef andscarlet-runners, it was decided to dine at half-past six instead ofhalf-past seven.

  "Poor Papa, I remember," said old Mrs. Touchwood, "always liked to dineat half-past three. That gave him a nice long morning for his patientsand time to smoke his cigar after dinner before he opened the dispensaryin the evening. Supper was generally cold unless he anticipated a nightcall, in which case we had soup."

  All were glad that the twentieth century had arrived, and they smiledsympathetically at the old lady, who, feeling that her anecdote hadscored a hit, embarked upon another about being taken to the GreatExhibition when she was eleven years old, which lasted right through thepudding, perhaps because it was trifle, and Harold did not feel inclinedto lose a mouthful by rash interruptions.

  After lunch John was taken all over the house and all round the gardenand congratulated time after time upon the wisdom he had shown in buyingAmbles: he was made to feel that property set him apart from other meneven more definitely than dramatic success.

  "Of course, Daniel was famous in his way," Hilda said. "But what did heleave me?"

  John, remembering the L120 a year in the bank and the collection ofstuffed humming birds at the pantechnicon, the importation of which toAmbles he was always dreading, felt that Hilda was not beingungratefully rhetorical.

  "And of course," Laurence contributed, "a vicar feels that hisglebe--the value of which by the way has just gone down another L2 anacre--is not his own."

  "Yes, you see," Edith put in, "if anything horrid happened to Laurenceit would belong to the next vicar."

  Again the glances of husband and wife played together in mid-air likebutterflies.

  "And so," Laurence went on, "when you tell us that you hope to buy thistwenty-acre field we all realize that in doing so you would mostemphatically be consolidating your property."

  "Oh, I'm sure you're wise to buy," said Hilda, weightily.

  "It would make Ambles so much larger, wouldn't it?" suggested Edith."Twenty acres, you see ... well, really, I suppose twenty acres would beas big as from...."

  "Come, Edith," said her husband. "Don't worry poor John with comparativeacres--we are all looking at the twenty-acre field now."

  The fierce little Kerry cows eyed the prospective owner peacefully,until Harold hit one of them with a slug from his air-gun, when they allbegan to career about the field, kicking up their heels and waving theirtails.

  "Don't do that, my boy," John said, crossly--for him very crossly.

  A short cut to Galton lay across this field, which John, though evenwhen they were quiet he never felt on really intimate terms with cows,had just decided to follow.

  "Darling, that's such a cruel thing to do," Hilda expostulated. "Thepoor cow wasn't hurting you."

  "It was looking at me," Harold protested.

  "There is a legend about Francis of Assisi, Harold," his Uncle Laurencebegan, "which will interest you and at the same time...."

  "Sorry to interrupt," John broke in, "but I must be getting along. Thistelegram.... I'll be back for tea."

  He hurried off and when everybody called out to remind him of the shortcut across the twenty-acre field he waved back cheerfully, as if hethought he was being wished a jolly walk; but he took the long wayround.

  It was a good five miles to Galton in the opposite direction from theroad by which he had driven up that morning; but on this fine autumnafternoon, going down hill nearly all the way through a foreground ofg
olden woods with prospects of blue distances beyond, John enjoyed thewalk, and not less because even at the beginning of it he stopped onceor twice to think how jolly it would be to see Miss Hamilton and MissMerritt coming round the next bend in the road. Later on, he did notbother to include Miss Merritt, and finally he discovered his fancy sosteadily fixed upon Miss Hamilton that he was forced to remind himselfthat Miss Hamilton in such a setting would demand a much higher standardof criticism than Miss Hamilton on the promenade deck of the _Murmania_.Nevertheless, John continued to think of her; and so pleasantly did hersemblance walk beside him and so exceptionally mild was the afternoonfor the season of the year that he must have strolled along the greaterpart of the way. At any rate, when he saw the tower of Galton church hewas shocked to find that it was already four o'clock.