lazily beyond it, with the estuary rippling here and there into gleams of gold, away to the bases of the glorious Welsh mountains, which rise up from the deepest purple to the thinnest gray, and with many a dim rift and crag, and wooded glen, and slope, varying their gigantic contour.
Tom Sedley, among others, showed his reverence for the Sabbath, by mounting a well brushed chimney-pot. No one, it is well established, can pray into a Jerry. The musical bell from the gray church tower hummed sweetly over the quaint old town, and the woods and hollows round about; and on a sudden, quite near him, Tom Sedley saw the friends of whom he had been in search!
The Etherage girls, as the ancient members of the family still called them, were two in number. Old Vane Etherage of Hazelden, a very pretty place, about twenty minutes' walk from the green of Cardyllian, has been twice married. The result is, that the two girls belong to very different periods. Miss Charity is forty-five by the parish register, and Miss Agnes of the blue eyes and golden hair, is just nineteen and four months.
Both smiling after their different fashions, advanced upon Tom, who strode up to them, also smiling, with his chimney-pot in his hand.
Miss Charity of the long waist, and long thin brown face, and somewhat goggle eyes, was first up, and asked him very volubly, at least eleven kind questions, before she had done shaking his hand, all which he answered laughing, and at last, said he —
"Little Agnes, are you going to cut me? How well you look! Certainly there's no place on earth like Cardyllian, for pretty complexions, is there?"
He turned for confirmation to the curiously brown thin countenance of Miss Charity, which smiled and nodded acquiescence. "You're going to-morrow, you say; that's a great pity; everything looking so beautiful."
"Everything," acquiesced Tom Sedley, with an arch glance at Agnes, who blushed and said merrily —
"You're just the same old fool you always were; and we don't mind one word you say."
"Aggie, my dear!" said her sister, who carried down the practice of reproof from the nursery; and it was well, I suppose, that Miss Aggie had that arbitress of proprieties always beside her.
"I suppose you have no end of news to tell me. Is anyone going to be married? Is anyone dying, or anyone christened? I'll hear it all by-and-by. And who are your neighbours at Malory?"
"Oh, quite charming!" exclaimed Miss Agnes eagerly. "The most mysterious people that ever came to a haunted house. You know Malory has a ghost."
"Nonsense, child. Don't mind her, Mr. Sedley," said Miss Charity. "I wonder how you can talk so foolishly."
"Oh, that's nothing new. Malory's been haunted as long as I can remember," said Tom.
"Well, I did not think Mr. Sedley could have talked like that!" exclaimed Miss Charity.
"Oh, by Jove, I know it. Everyone knows it that ever lived here. Malory's full of ghosts. None but very queer people could think of living there; and, Miss Agnes, you were going to say – "
"Yes, they are awfully mysterious. There's an old man who stalks about at night, like the ghost in "Hamlet," and never speaks, and there's a beautiful young lady, and a gray old woman who calls herself Anne Sheckleton. They shut themselves up so closely – you can't imagine. Some people think the old man is a maniac or a terrible culprit."
"Highly probable," said Tom; "and the old woman a witch, and the young lady a vampire."
"Well, hardly that," laughed Miss Agnes, "for they came to church to-day."
"How you can both talk such folly," interposed Miss Charity.
"But you know they would not let Mr. Pritchard up to the house," pleaded Miss Agnes. "Mr. Pritchard, the curate, you know" – this was to Tom Sedley – "he's a funny little man – he preached to-day – very good and zealous, and all that – and he wanted to push his way up to the house, and the cross old man they have put to keep the gate, took him by the collar, and was going to beat him. Old Captain Shrapnell says he did beat him with a child's cricket-bat; but he hates Mr. Pritchard, so I'm not sure; but, at all events, he was turned out in disgrace, and blushes and looks dignified ever since whenever Malory is mentioned. Now, everyone here knows what a good little man poor Mr. Pritchard is, so it must have been sheer hatred of religion that led to his being turned out in that way."
"But the ladies were in church, my dear Aggie; we saw them, Mr. Sedley, to-day; they were in the Malory pew."
"Oh, indeed?" said Tom Sedley, artfully; "and you saw them pretty distinctly, I dare say."
"The young lady is quite beautiful, we thought. I'm so sorry you were not in our seat; though, indeed, people ought not to be staring about them in church; but you would have admired her immensely."
"Oh, I saw them. They were the people nearly opposite to the Verneys' seat, in the small pew? Yes, they were– that is, the young lady, I mean, was perfectly lovely," said little Tom, who could not with any comfort practise a reserve.
"See, the people are beginning to hurry off to church; it must be time to go," said Charity.
So the little party walked up by the court-house into Castle Street, and turned into quaint old Church Street, walking demurely, and talking very quietly to the solemn note of the old bell.
CHAPTER V
A VISIT TO HAZELDEN
They all looked toward the Malory seat on taking their places in their own; but that retreat was deserted now, and remained so, as Tom Sedley at very brief intervals ascertained, throughout the afternoon service; after which, with a secret sense of disappointment, honest Sedley escorted the Etherage "girls" up the steep road that leads through the wooded glen of Hazelden to the hospitable house of old Vane Etherage.
Everyone in that part of the world knows that generous, pompous, and boisterous old gentleman. You could no more visit Cardyllian without seeing Vane Etherage, than you could visit Naples without seeing Vesuvius. He is a fine portly bust, but little more. In his waking hours he lives alternately in his Bath chair and in the great leathern easy chair in his study. He manages to shuffle very slowly, leaning upon his servant on one side, and propped on his crutch at the other, across the hall of the Cardyllian Club, which boasts about six-and-thirty members, besides visitors, and into the billiard-room, where he takes possession of the chair by the fire, and enjoys the agreeable conversation of Captain Shrapnell, hears all about the new arrivals, who they are, what screws are loose, and where, and generally all the gossip and scandal of the little commonwealth of Cardyllian.
Vane Etherage had served in the navy, and, I believe, reached the rank of captain. In Cardyllian he was humorously styled "the Admiral," when people spoke of him, not to him; for old Etherage was fiery and consequential, and a practical joke which commenced in a note from an imaginary secretary, announcing that "The Badger Hunt" would meet at Hazelden House on a certain day, and inducing hospitable preparations, for the entertainment of those nebulous sportsmen, was like to have had a sanguinary ending. It was well remembered that when young Sniggers of Sligh Farm apologised on that occasion, old Etherage had arranged with Captain Shrapnell, who was to have been his second, that the Admiral was to fight in his Bath chair – an evidence of resource and resolution which was not lost upon his numerous friends.
"How do you do, Sedley? Very glad to see you, Tom – very glad indeed, sir. You'll come to-morrow and dine; you must, indeed – and next day. You know our Welsh mutton – you do – you know it well; it's better here than
