Fortunately Turner was not at that moment talking to Olive, or he would have met with random replies. She was thinking, “Oh, if Margaret should ever come to know of yesterday morning!”
Roland answered in the affirmative and then Turner struck in.
“By the bye, Mr Rowlands, that must have been you I saw down there yesterday. I was envying the owner of that splendid dog.”
Olive was on thorns. Her accomplice, however, was equal to the occasion. Noting her uneasiness, he took up the subject at once, and the narrative of his acquisition of the faithful Roy soon directed the conversation to the wilds of the Far West, where the rector himself had gone through some stirring experiences in his younger days. During the reminiscences involved, Roland caught a rapid grateful glance from the bright eyes of his vis-à-vis. Then he began to study Turner’s face, whose owner was listening attentively to his host’s anecdote, and came to the conclusion that he did not like it. Moreover he was not sure how much concealed intent lurked beneath Turner’s innocent remark. Turner was bumptious—most curates were. No, he did not like Turner. Confound the fellow! what did he mean by looking at and talking to Olive in that familiar and appropriating way—as if she belonged to him, or soon would? But if she should, what the deuce was it to him—Roland Dorrien? Nothing—only these young parsons put on far too much side. Clearly Turner wanted taking down.
“I think you were in church on Sunday, were you not, Mr Rowlands?” said Margaret, dispelling his brown study.
“Er—Yes. Yes—I was. Very fine ceremony and music too. I never came across anything of the kind before.”
The approval implied in this answer atoned for its absent-mindedness and brought a gratified smile to Margaret’s face. The speaker had quite won her heart.
Then the conversation became general, and there was a vast deal of laughter and banter, and Roland found himself frequently appealed to, to act as umpire in some ridiculous point of debate, and in fact treated as an intimate friend rather than as a stranger who had not been two hours in their midst, and as he caught the bright, mischievous retort which Olive threw at him over her shoulder as the girls withdrew, he blessed the luck which had thrown him by the merest chance into such a delightful circle. Nor could he help contrasting the probable scene at Cranston at this moment, and a sort of mental shiver ran through him as he did so.
“Circulate the intoxicants, Turner—or, in plainer and more decorous English, pass the bottle,” cried the rector, as the door closed on his daughters, leaving the men to themselves. “Fill up, Mr Rowlands. And now I want you to tell me about your travels. I was a good deal in the States as a young man. When I was out West, the Plains tribes were not exuberantly friendly. That was even before you were in long clothes, I fancy, ha! ha! but yet we had two or three grand buffalo hunts with them. There’s a head upstairs in my boy’s smoking den—where we’ll go and have a cigar by and by—whose owner I turned over on one of those occasions. Splendid head, and well set up too.”
Then these two—the old traveller and the younger one—plunged into a flood of reminiscence in all the delightful abandon of a common and welcome topic. At last the rector started to his feet.