Nuncey swept down upon him, caught him in her strong embrace, implanted a sound kiss on the top of his head, and held him at arms' length with a hand on either shoulder.
"You're a dear little well-to-do father, and the best in the world. But oh! you've come nigh breaking my heart these three months—for a worse regrater there never was, an' couldn' be!"
"Upon my word," said Mr. Benny, glancing over her shoulder at Hester with a twinkle, "I seem to be getting good fortune with a heap of chastening."
CHAPTER XXII.
CLEM IS LOST TO MYRA.
The post of 'Mistress' to the Widows' Houses was a somewhat singular one. The hospital itself had been founded in 1634 by an ancestor of Sir George Dinham's, and dedicated to St. Peter, as a retreat for eleven poor women, widows of husbands drowned at sea. From a narrow cobbled lane, behind the parish church and in the shadow of its tower, you passed into a quadrangle, two sides of which were formed by the lodgings, twelve in number (the twelfth occupied by the caretaker, or Mistress), the other two by the wash-house and store-buildings. In the centre of this courtyard stood a leaden pump, approached by four pebbled paths between radiating beds of flowers—Provence roses, Madonna lilies, and old perennials and biennials such as honesty, sweet-william, snapdragon, the pink and white everlasting pea, with bushes of fuchsia, southernwood, and rosemary. Along the first floor of the alms-buildings ran a deep open gallery, or upstairs cloister, where in warm weather the old women sat and knitted or gossiped in the shade.
The rule restricting admission to the widows of drowned mariners had been gradually relaxed during the last fifty years, and was now a dead letter; aged spinsters even, such as Aunt Butson, being received in default of applicants with better title. Also Sir George's father, having once on a time been called upon to depose a caretaker for ill-using the inmates, had replaced her by a gentlewoman; and thinking to safeguard them in future by increasing the dignity of the post, had rebuilt and enlarged the new Mistress's lodgings, and increased her salary by endowment to £eighty per annum.
All this Sir George explained very delicately to Hester, on the morning of Nicky Vro's funeral, having called at the school to seek an interview on his way back from the churchyard.
"But I am not a decayed gentlewoman," Hester objected; "at least, not yet. I shall be standing in the way of someone who really wants this post, while I am strong and able to earn my living. Also—please do not think me ungrateful or conceited—to teach is my calling, and I take a pride in it."