extremely pretty and wild, and the kitchen is very convenient; really I quite wonder how the people who built it could have made it all so comfortable. You see there are one—two—the pantry, the kitchen and two rooms on the ground floor and plenty of room upstairs for everybody, and as for the sun! it streams into all the windows at once from morning till night. And such a pretty view, too, of that old gate opposite—where does it lead to, Mrs. Ambrose? It is so very pretty."
"It leads to the park and the Hall," answered Mrs. Ambrose.
"Oh—" Mrs. Goddard's tone changed. "But nobody lives there?" she asked suddenly.
"Oh no—it is in Chancery, you know."
"What—what is that, exactly?" asked Mrs. Goddard, timidly. "Is there a young heir waiting to grow up—I mean waiting to take possession?"
"No. There is a suit about it. It has been going on for forty years my husband says, and they cannot decide to whom it belongs."
"I see," answered Mrs. Goddard. "I suppose they will never decide now."
"Probably not for some time."
"It must be a very pretty place. Can one go in, do you think? I am so fond of trees—what a beautiful garden you have yourself, Mrs. Ambrose."
"Would you like to see it?" asked the vicar's wife, anxious to bring the visit to a conclusion.
"Oh, thank you—of all things!" exclaimed Mrs. Goddard. "Would not you like to run about the garden, Nellie?"
The little girl nodded slowly and stared at Mrs. Ambrose.
"My husband is a very good gardener," said the latter, leading the way out to the hall. "And so was John Short, but he has left us, you know."
"Who was John Short?" asked Mrs. Goddard rather absently, as she watched Mrs. Ambrose who was wrapping herself in a huge blue waterproof cloak and tying a sort of worsted hood over her head.
"He was one of the boys Mr. Ambrose prepared for college—such a good fellow. You may have seen him when you came last June, Mrs. Goddard?"
"Had he very bright blue eyes—a nice face?"
"Yes—that is, it might have been Mr. Angleside—Lord Scatterbeigh's son—he was here, too."
"Oh," said Mrs. Goddard, "perhaps it was."
"Mamma," asked little Nellie, "what is Laws Catterbay?"
"A peer, darling."
"Like the one at Brighton, mamma, with a band?"
"No, child," answered the mother laughing. "P, double E, R, peer—a rich gentleman."
"Like poor papa then?" inquired the irrepressible Eleanor.
Mrs. Goddard turned pale and pressed the little girl close to her side, leaning down to whisper in her ear.
"You must not ask foolish questions, darling—I will tell you by and by."
"Papa was a rich gentleman," objected the child.
Mrs. Goddard looked at Mrs. Ambrose, and the ready tears came into her eyes. The vicar's wife smiled kindly and took little Nellie by the hand.
"Come, dear," she said in the motherly tone that was natural to her when she was not receiving visitors. "Come and see the garden and you can play with Carlo."
"Can't I see Laws Catterbay, too?" asked the little girl rather wistfully.
"Carlo is a great, big, brown dog," said Mrs. Ambrose, leading the child out into the garden, while Mrs. Goddard followed close behind. Before they had gone far they came upon the vicar, arrayed in an old coat, his hands thrust into a pair of gigantic gardening gloves and a battered old felt hat upon his head. Mrs. Goddard had felt rather uncomfortable in the impressive society of Mrs. Ambrose and the sight of the vicar's genial face was reassuring in the extreme. She was not disappointed, for he immediately relieved the situation by asking all manner of kindly questions, interspersed with remarks upon his garden, while Mrs. Ambrose introduced little Nellie to the acquaintance of Carlo who had not seen so pretty a little girl for many a day, and capered and wagged his feathery tail in a manner most unseemly for so clerical a dog.
So it came about that Mrs. Goddard established herself at Billingsfield and made her first visit to the vicarage. After that the ice was broken and things went on smoothly enough. Mrs. Ambrose's hints concerning foreign blood, and her husband's invariable remonstrance to the effect that she ought to be more charitable, grew more and more rare as time went on, and finally ceased altogether. Mrs. Goddard became a regular institution, and ceased to astonish the inhabitants. Mr. Thomas Reid, the sexton, was heard to remark from time to time that he "didn't hold with th'm newfangle fashins in dress;" but he was a regular old conservative, and most people agreed with Mr. Abraham Boosey of the Duke's Head, who had often been to London, and who said she did "look just A one, slap up, she did!"
Mrs. Goddard became an institution, and in the course of the first year of her residence in the cottage it came to be expected that she should dine at the vicarage at least once a week; and once a week, also, Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose went up and had tea with her and little Eleanor at the cottage. It came to pass also that Mrs. Goddard heard a vast deal of talk about John Short and his successes at Trinity, and she actually developed a lively interest in his career, and asked for news of him almost as eagerly as though he had been already a friend of her own. In very quiet places people easily get into the sympathetic habit of regarding their neighbours' interests as very closely allied to their own. The constant talk about John Short, the vicar's sanguine hopes for his brilliant future, and Mrs. Ambrose's unlimited praise of his moral qualities, repeated day by day and week by week produced a vivid impression on Mrs. Goddard's mind. It would have surprised her and even amused her beyond measure had she had any idea that she herself had for a long time absorbed the interest of this same John Short, that he had written hundreds of Greek and Latin verses in her praise, while wholly ignorant of her name, and that at the very time when without knowing him, she was constantly mentioning him as though she knew him intimately well, he himself was looking back to the one glimpse he had had of her, as to a dream of unspeakable bliss.
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