As for Mrs. Barnes, for the first time since I have known her, her face was cloudless. My uncle, embarked on anecdote, did not mention the war. We did not once get on to Germans. Mrs. Barnes could give herself up to real enjoyment. She beamed. She was suffused with reverential delight. And her whole body, the very way she sat in her chair, showed an absorption, an eagerness not to miss a crumb of my uncle's talk, that would have been very gratifying to him if he were not used to just this. It is strange how widows cling to clergymen. Ever since I can remember, like the afflicted Margaret's apprehensions in Wordsworth's poem, they have come to Uncle Rudolph in crowds. My aunt used to raise her eyebrows and ask me if I could at all tell her what they saw in him.
When we bade each other goodnight there was something in Mrs. Barnes's manner to me that showed me the presence of a man was already doing its work. She was aerated. Fresh, air had got into her and was circulating freely. At my bedroom door she embraced me with warm and simple heartiness, without the usual painful search of my face to see if by any chance there was anything she had left undone in her duty of being unselfish. My uncle's arrival has got her thoughts off me for a bit. I knew that what we wanted was a man. Not that a dean is quite my idea of a man, but then on the other hand neither is he quite my idea of a woman, and his arrival does put an end for the moment to Mrs. Barnes's and my dreadful combats de générosité. He infuses fresh blood into our anaemic little circle. Different blood, perhaps I should rather say; the blood of deans not being, I think, ever very fresh.
'Good night, Uncle Rudolph,' I said, getting up at ten o'clock and holding up my face to him. 'We have to thank you for a delightful evening.'
'Most delightful,' echoed Mrs. Barnes enthusiastically, getting up too and rolling up her knitting.
My uncle was gratified. He felt he had been at his best, and that his best had been appreciated.
'Good night, dear child,' he said, kissing my offered cheek. 'May the blessed angels watch about your bed.'
'Thank you, Uncle Rudolph,' I said, bowing my head beneath this benediction.
Mrs. Barnes looked on at the little domestic scene with reverential sympathy. Then her turn came.
'Good night, Mrs. Barnes,' said my uncle most graciously, shaking hands and doing what my dancing mistress used to call bending from the waist.
And to Dolly, 'Good night, Miss—'