Meantime, Miss Peyton's little romance about the Broughton-Hastings affair rather falls to bits. Georgie, taking advantage of an afternoon that sees the small Redmonds on the road to a juvenile party, goes up to Gowran, and, making her way to the morning room, runs to Clarissa and gives her a dainty little hug.
"Aren't you glad I have come?" she says, with the utmost naïveté. "I'm awfully glad myself. The children have all gone to the Dugdales', and so I am my own mistress."
"And so you came to me," says Clarissa.
"Yes, of course."
"And now, to make you happy," says Clarissa, meditatively.
"Don't take any thought about that. It is already an accomplished fact. I am with you, and therefore I am perfectly happy."
"Still, you so seldom get a holiday," goes on Clarissa, regretfully, which is a little unfair, as the Redmonds are the easiest-going people in the world, and have a sort of hankering after the giving of holidays and the encouragement of idleness generally. The vicar, indeed, is laden with a suppressed and carefully hidden theory that children should never do anything but laugh and sit in the sun. In his heart of hearts he condemns all Sunday-schools, as making the most blessed day one of toil, and a wearying of the flesh, to the little ones.
"Why,—why," said he, once, in an unguarded moment, bitterly repented of afterwards, "forbid them their rest on the Sabbath day?"
"What a pity the afternoon is so uncertain!" says Clarissa. "We might have gone for a nice long drive."