Philippa was busy with her adieux. Mrs. Johnson remained indomitable.
“What was your regiment, Mr. Lessingham?” she persisted. “You must forgive my seeming inquisitive, but I am so interested in military affairs.”
Lessingham bowed courteously.
“I do not remember alluding to my soldiering at all,” he said coolly, “but as a matter of fact I am in the Guards.”
Mrs. Johnson accepted Philippa's hand and the inevitable. Her good-by to Lessingham was most affable. She walked up the road with the vicar.
“I think, Vicar,” she said severely, “that for a small place, Dreymarsh is becoming one of the worst centres of gossip I ever knew. Every one has been saying all sorts of unkind things about that charming Mr. Lessingham, and there you are—Major Felstead's friend and a Guardsman! Somehow or other, I felt that he belonged to one of the crack regiments. I shall certainly ask him to dinner one night next week.”
The vicar nodded benignly. He had the utmost respect for Mrs. Johnson's cook, and his own standard of social desirability, to which the object of their discussion had attained.
“I should be happy to meet Mr. Lessingham at any time,” he pronounced, with ample condescension. “I noticed him in church last Sunday morning.”