And when the two met at the door, and the captain shook hands and said that they would be neighbours, he was received with a certain hesitating smile.
“I should tell you, sir, that I am only taking occasional duty here—assisting. I am Mr Atkins. I have a select private academy at the vicarage, which the President of Saint Cyril’s lets to me. He is here in the summer holidays.”
“I understand. The curate lives at Downhill!” said Captain Carbonel.
“At the priory, in fact, with his father’s family. Yes, it is rather an unfortunate state of affairs,” he said, answering the captain’s countenance rather than his words; “but I have no responsibility. I merely assist in the Sunday duty; and, indeed, I advise you to have as little to do with the Uphill people as possible. An idle good-for-nothing set! Any magistrate would tell you that there’s no parish where they have so many up before them.”
“No wonder!” said Captain Carbonel under his breath.
“A bad set,” repeated Mr Atkins, pausing at the shed where his old grey horse was put up; and there they parted.
The captain and his wife and her sister walked to Downhill, two miles off, across broad meadows, a river, and a pretty old bridge, the next Sunday morning, found the church scantily filled, but with more respectable-looking people, and heard the same sermon over again, so that Mary was able to identify it with one in a published volume.