'It is very warm here,' said Robina, who had left London in an east wind.
'We find it cold up here in the mountains,' said Wilmet, who wore a velvet jacket and thick glossy striped blue and brown silk. 'Dr. Chenu warned us to prepare.'
'Yes,' said John, 'so I sent her out at Marseilles to fit herself out, and what does she come home with but one lugubrious black silk, which she tried to persuade me was the correct thing!'
'And then,' said Wilmet, 'the next thing I found was his bed spread all over with patterns, and it was all I could do not to have enough to clothe all Bexley. I was obliged to get a new box as it is, and luggage is frightfully expensive on these French lines.'
Willie and Robin, though both in some awe of Wilmet, could not help smiling at a speech so exactly like herself, as to remind them of Lance's mischievous averment that she must have married John because it was so much cheaper than sending any one out.
Those four happy tongues, how much they had to tell and to ask, about the two journeys and the two homes, all mixed up together, Bill's tidings being the most recent, and all that was known by letter becoming much more real and interesting by word of mouth.
Cherry? Yes, Cherry was very well, and had no end of a picture for the exhibition, of the maiden spinning for her lover's ransom—she had studied the maiden from one of Ernest Lamb's sisters, but she had put in exactly her own eyes, poor Cherry! There was a picture of Stella and Theodore upstairs for Wilmet Lance had played his violin to keep Theodore happy while sitting. Oh, and had they heard that Lance had really been asked to take the organist's place? The former one had sent in his resignation, and after the half-year that Lance and the choir had worked together, there was a general desire that he should take the post. Mr. Bevan had even written to request it, at £50 a year instead of £70.
'What a shame!' broke out Wilmet 'I hope Felix did not consent! I had much rather he was not paid at all.'
'That was what Lance wanted, of course,' said Robina; 'he wished to give his music freely, as he does not give up the business.'
'But Felix said he had no desire to give either £20 or £70 a year to my Lady, and that he did not accept her as the Church,' said Will; 'and Miles—old Miles was more rabid than ever he was at the Zoraya; and Lance was in a state bordering on distraction for fear it should go off altogether, and he should undergo torture from a fifty-pounder every Sunday of his life, but my Lady gave in; and Lance reconciles his conscience to the lucre of gain by getting a lesson from Miles once a week, and raising the pay on the biggest of those interminable little Lightfoots.'