[CHAPTER XI]
Uncle Guy's Temper
FELICIA'S life now became one of routine. Every morning she breakfasted with her grandfather; then, Sundays excepted, went to the Vicarage, where she remained with her cousins, sharing their studies, and returning to the Priory at four o'clock. She frequently took tea with her uncle in his sitting-room, at his desire, after which she prepared her lessons for the following day, retiring to rest subsequent to an early supper. Mr. Renford dined alone in the large dining-room, and generally spent the evening by himself, though occasionally he sat an hour with his son, or paid a visit to his daughter. He was naturally of a sociable disposition, and must have often grown very weary of his own society.
"They are beginning to cut the corn in that big field at the back of the Vicarage," Felicia informed her uncle one August evening as she stood at his sitting-room window looking into the garden, gay with dahlias and other showy autumn flowers. "It's such a pity you never go out, Uncle Guy, for everything's so lovely. You haven't been downstairs once since I came."
"And probably I never may again," he responded moodily.
"Oh, don't say that! Why shouldn't you come downstairs and go into the garden? It's not as though you were lame or couldn't walk."
"Has my father been telling you to say this to me?" he demanded.
"Oh, no!"
"Because he's been lecturing me on the point himself. He might as well leave me in peace instead of advising me 'to rouse myself and try to take an interest in life,' as he put it. If his back ached as mine does sometimes, he'd have more sympathy with me, perhaps."
The querulous tone in which this was said was full of bitterness, and Felicia thought it wiser to make no reply. She knew her grandfather was far from being unsympathetic—indeed, he always made his son his first consideration—and she thought her uncle had no right to speak of him complainingly. Evidently the invalid was in one of his most dissatisfied moods. The little girl had been warned by Mrs. Price that there was no pleasing Mr. Guy to-day, and she would certainly have kept away from him if he had not sent a message to her to the effect that he desired her company as soon as she had finished her lessons. And now she was here, he did not appear to want her. She had offered to read to him, as she had done on several previous occasions—sometimes from the Bible—but he had declined to listen to her. The truth was, he had worked himself into a state of nervous irritability on account of a conversation he had had with his father, during which Mr. Renford had urged him to come downstairs and dine that night, and he had declined to do so.