“Oh,” said she proudly, “you will be gratified, Horatio: he looked very grave and seemed much impressed; said he could not promise, but that he would think it over; he would watch and see how you got on.”
Loud rang the parson’s laugh again.
“Meanwhile,” shrieked Madam Sophia, triumphantly, “he said he would prefer to study the question in the original Italian—whatever he may have meant by that. I cannot but feel there is promise.”
“Extraordinary, extraordinary!” said Horatio Tutterville. “And David?” he asked presently. “Are you going to enrol him as a follower of Boccacio?”
“My dear Doctor,” smiled the lady, “I flatter myself that I can follow you in the vernal tongue as well as anyone—but when it comes to Hebrew, I plead the privileges of my sex! This much I understand, however: you refer to David. Well, he also is putting off the old man. Doctor,” she clasped her hands and drew her large countenance wreathed in smiles of mystery, close to his ear to whisper: “This will end in marriage bells! Mark my words.”
“Thus the prophetess!” replied the rector, with the scoff of the true man for the match-making feminine. “Alas, my poor Sophia, there’s no marrying stuff in David!”
He wiped his eyes, and rose.
“Well,” he said, “after the bee has sipped he must to work.”
“You will find,” said she, “a fire in your study, your books as you left them last night and a bunch of our last roses where you love to see them.”
Sedately the reverend Horatio moved towards the peaceful precincts, where awaited him the pages of his next Advent sermons—and perhaps also the manuscripts of those delicate commentaries on Tibullus, long promised to his Oxford publisher.