“Oh, he’s a widower then?”
“Yes, sir. His lady died shortly before he came here, I’ve heard tell. But law bless you, sir, Miss Margaret, she did for all the younger ones as though she was a grown-up young lady.”
“How many of them are there—daughters, I mean?”
“Three, sir. You must have seen them in church, in the front seat of all. Not on the side of the heagle—the other side.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, and they’re that good—although the two younger ones, leastways, are merry and fond of a bit of mischief. Why when Jenkins broke his leg”—and the good woman launched out into a dissertation after the manner of her kind, straying far away from the goodness of the parson’s daughters, which Jenkins’ broken leg was hauled in to illustrate—far away even from that fractured, but once more useful, member itself into a great cloud of reminiscence, wherein the speaker’s uncle’s deceased wife’s sister’s third cousin once removed and a certain tom-cat endowed with marvellous properties largely figured.
Her auditor gave a weary sigh. In the hope of finding out more about his new acquaintance, he had let the woman’s tongue run on, and found, like the ingenious Oriental who invented a steamboat, that having once set it going he was unable to stop it.
Roland ate his luncheon in a brown study. His landlady’s gossip had told him what he wanted to know. The girl by whose side he had sat and walked yesterday morning—the girl who had so strangely attracted him in the parish church, was the daughter of his late visitor—and to-night he was to dine at the Rectory. Things couldn’t have turned out better. Yet all this was in the highest degree absurd. What could it matter to him who she was—or indeed if he never saw her again! But that morning on the beach! Bosh! He had not fallen in love with her—not he. He knew better than that. Yet Roland Dorrien, gloomy of temperament and entertaining no spark of affection for any living soul, was obliged to admit to himself that he had thought and was still thinking a good deal about that oval-faced girl with the dark expressive eyes.
And here a new idea struck him. That assumed name had been all very well up to a certain point, but now that he had accepted the rector’s invitation it had an ugly look of entering a man’s family circle under false colours. He wished now he had never adopted it, but then his plan of staying in Wandsborough incog, would have fallen through, and that he did not wish at all. Well, he would let it alone for the present. Perhaps during the evening he would find an opportunity of explaining matters to his host: at any rate to-morrow he would run up to Town for a day or two, and return to Cranston in ordinary and conventional style. That would put matters right.