"I SHOULD like to get hold of that child. There is something out of time in her life."
The Rev. Osborne Miles, Vicar of Burwood, stood on a side-path in his garden, surveying with deep interest a group of seedlings, pushing their way upward. After weeks of severe cold, a mild spell had set in—quite time it should, people said, near the end of April—and the Vegetable World was responding with vigour.
He had been presented to the living scarcely a year before this date, and was therefore still "a new man" in Burwood. Thirty years of strenuous toil in a murky manufacturing town, with a parish of twenty thousand, had broken his health by the time he arrived at sixty; and after much hesitation, and many regrets, he accepted a country cure. Burwood, though called a "town," was to him absolute country. Sleepy country too!
He did not look ill, as he stood with squared shoulders and vigorous mien—being a man of natural energy, and one who would never, at his physical worst, carry himself with limp dejection. Strong in build, deliberate and capable in movement, with abundant grey hair and searching eyes beneath overhanging brows, he was not one to be easily overcome; but two years earlier he had been brought by long strain to the lowest possible ebb of vitality. Yet he rallied; and though sternly prohibited by doctors from returning to his old and beloved sphere, he never dreamt of leading an idle existence. So the Burwood offer was accepted.
One thing he found here which, through all his strenuous existence, he had thirsted for—a garden. The old Vicarage, built of the same dull-hued local stone as the ancient Church, stood in an acre of ground well laid out. He could at last freely indulge his passion for flowers.
Of course, even in quiet Burwood, his time was much taken up; but after the life he had lived, this by comparison was ease. He found time for everything, and for his garden besides—especially on Monday, always counted as far as possible an "off-day;" and this was Monday.
After working among thousands of men, it was a change to find himself chiefly concerned with elderly ladies, spinsters or otherwise. Not all elderly. There were many girls in the place; and he studied them with interest. They belonged to such a different type from the young business-women and rough mill-girls, among whom he had worked hitherto. The mild futility of existence among many of them aroused his wonder. It seemed so inadequate a use of life!
"What do they do with themselves?" he one day asked his wife.
"A good many things, dear. They go to tennis-parties—and play hockey—and bicycle and skate. A few of them hunt."
"You are talking of amusements. What work do they do?"