“No, sir. It would have been a pity as long as you were enjoying it. We didn’t worry the first fortnight. But then we did expect to hear. I would have been very anxious, only the weather kept so fine I felt you couldn’t come to any harm, only for them wild men on the ship, sir. Bates didn’t like the looks of them at all.”
“Oh, they were really most harmless fellows.”
“How did you leave Mr. Edmund, sir?” asked Bates.
“Quite well, thank you. He is on his way home, but it will be a few weeks before he gets back. Where is Mr. Snape?”
“He is away for the day, sir. He told me to apologise to you, and tell you he had made an appointment with his Lordship. He thought it better not to put it off.”
“Quite right. There’s no trouble, I hope?”
“Well, sir,” Mrs. Rattray explained, “they will be very glad to see you again in the parish. Oh no, not trouble exactly, but they don’t seem to hold with some of his ways, I don’t know why. I’m sure a quieter gentleman in the house I never knew.”
The highest praise Mrs. Rattray ever gave to one of my sex was to describe him as “quiet.” She seemed to suspect all men of a tendency to sudden outbursts of noise.
“Some of them don’t like his ritualistic ways, sir,” said Bates. “There were none of the regular sidesmen collecting last Sunday, and there has been trouble because he asked Miss Reynolds to be secretary of his new communicants’ guild. She’s only been a year in the parish, and they did not like the idea of a guild, anyhow.”
“All right, Bates. No doubt Mr. Snape will tell me all about it. Now I must go and see the pigeons till lunch is ready. Then I’ll have a walk round the village.”