Health to 'Mr. Eddard' followed, surprising the new comers who had not learnt to accept the Vicar's parish name. It drained his provision of liquor, and gave him the opportunity of saying, 'Thank you sincerely, dear friends. We are old friends, you know, and I need say no more, only that now we have seen the good time coming, you had better wish the travellers good-night, and let my sisters rest. You will all be better acquainted soon.'
'Well managed, Mr. Edward,' said Felix, smiling, as Clement, for the first time able to speak to him after dismissing his flock, ran up the steps looking heated and radiant.
'There's another thing I've done, Felix,' he said, rather breathlessly. 'I've got a supper for the ringers in the long room. Martha is much displeased about it, but it is the only chance of breaking the neck of the drinking at the Rood without making you unpopular.'
'All right, Clem, thank you. Well! you look better than when I saw you last!'
'I'm quite jolly, thank you;' and indeed, the fagged air of depression had changed to hope and sunshine; he had grown quite sunburnt, and as Cherry followed up the compliment, had turned into a vigorous country parson instead of a white town-bred one. He was acting as a sort of host. 'This way, Wilmet. You must settle about the rooms, Cherry. It was all guess-work between Martha and me. There's some tea in the drawing-room by this time.'
He led them quickly through a large hall, paved with black and white lozenges, into a sort of conservatory passage, glazed on one side, and containing old orange-trees in tubs, and more recent fuchsias and geraniums, a great curtain of lilac Bougainvillia drooping at one end—making the girls shriek with ecstasy, and reproach Felix with never having told them of it.
'I am afraid I had forgotten it,' said he. 'I never went into this part of the house on my last two visits.'
'It was Jane's territory (Mrs. Fulbert),' said Clement, 'and I am afraid she has dismantled the room a good deal. The one hundred pounds you allowed her to choose as her own furniture came chiefly out of that, and the valuable things poor Fulbert had in his smoking-room. It was an odd choice, but I thought you would not mind that, and the valuation man looked sharp after her. I kept out of the way of the squabble.'
'I know where I am now,' said Wilmet. 'There's the garden-door at the end. And here is the drawing-room door. Ah! it does look empty.'
'Oh, never mind tables and chairs. The window!' cried Angela, flying forward to the eastern one, a deep bay, cushioned round, and looking out on the sloping lawn, gay with flower-beds, in pleasant evening shadow, the river sparkling beyond, and with a sidelong view of the bridge on the one hand and the church on the other. Two other windows looked to the south, also into the garden.