The other held out his hands. “Well, well!” he cried. “And I thought you were....” He hesitated.
“The old clothes man,” laughed Jim.
“Oh, very droll!” the vicar smiled, shaking him warmly by the hand. “How ridiculous of me! Do come in, my dear sir!”
Jim followed him into the drawing-room, and here he found a little old lady, who was introduced to him as Miss Proudfoote, and a florid, middle-aged man with a waxed moustache, who looked like a sergeant-major, and proved to be Dr. Spooner, the local medical man. They had evidently been lunching at the Vicarage, and were now drinking the post-prandial concoction which the English believe to be coffee. They both greeted him with a sort of deference, which however, did not conceal their curiosity.
During the next ten minutes Jim heard a great deal of his “poor dear uncle” and his unfortunate cousins. The tragedy of their deaths, it seemed, had cast the profoundest gloom over the village; but it was a case of “the King is dead; long live the King!” and all three of his new acquaintances appeared to be anxious to pay him every respect.
Dr. Spooner asked him from what part of England he had just come, and the news that he had been living abroad and had not visited the land of his birth for many years caused a sensation. The thought occurred to him that he ought not to mention Egypt, or any other land which had recently known him as Jim Easton; for any such revelations might bring discredit upon him, and he wished to start his life at Eversfield without any handicap. He therefore spoke only of California, referring to it casually as a country where he had resided.
Miss Proudfoote turned to the vicar. “Is it not extraordinary,” she said, “how many of our young men shoulder what Mr. Kipling calls ‘the white man’s burden’ and go forth to live amongst the heathen?” Her geography was evidently at fault, but out of consideration for her years and her sex, no correction was forthcoming. “I suppose,” she proceeded, “you met with our missionaries out there? It is wonderful what a great work the Church Missionary Society is doing all over the world.”
The Doctor here had the hardihood to interpose. “Oh, but California is a part of the United States of America ...” he ventured.
“How foolish of me!—of course,” smiled the old lady. “The Americans are quite an educated people. I met an American traveller once in Oxford: a pleasant spoken young man he seemed, so far as I could understand what he said.”
“Yes,” remarked the vicar, “America can no longer be called ‘the common sewer of England,’ as it was when I was a boy.”