"I desire your presence in the study for a few moments, Adelaide. Perhaps you will be kind enough to precede me thither."
He held the door open for her with elaborate ceremony, and Mrs. Lorimer had no choice but to obey. She departed with a scared effort to check her tears under the stern disapproval of his look.
He closed the door upon her and advanced to the table, gazing round upon them with judicial severity.
"I am here," he announced, "to pass sentence."
Jeanie, crying softly in her corner, made desperate attempts to control herself under the awful look that was at this point concentrated upon her.
After a pause the Vicar proceeded, with a spiteful glance at Avery. "It is my intention to impose a holiday-task of sufficient magnitude to keep you all out of mischief during the rest of the holidays. You will therefore commit to memory various different portions of Milton's Paradise Lost which I shall select, and which must be repeated to me in their entirety without mistake on my return from my own hard-earned holiday. And let me give you all fair warning," he raised his voice and looked round again, regarding poor Jeanie with marked austerity, "that if any one of you is not word-perfect in his or her task by the day of my return—boy or girl I care not, the offence is the same—he or she will receive a sound caning and the task will be returned."
Thus he delivered himself, and turned to go; but paused at the door to add, "Also, Mrs. Denys, will you be good enough to remember that it is against my express command that either you or any of the children should enter any part of Rodding Park during my absence. I desire that to be clearly understood."
"It is understood," said Avery in a low voice.
"That is well," said the Reverend Stephen, and walked majestically from the room.
A few seconds of awed silence followed his departure; then to Avery's horror Gracie snatched off one of her shoes and flung it violently at the door that he had closed behind him. Luckily for Gracie, her father was at the foot of the stairs before this episode took place and beyond earshot also of the furious storm of tears that followed it, with which even Avery found it difficult to cope.