"It's quite impossible, Sally," Paul had said, in answer to the rather wistful look in her dark eyes. "To dine there quietly by ourselves, is one thing; to go and meet a heap of smart people, who are my special abomination, is another; and I should not have thought you would have wished it either."
"It would be so much experience; I could be in it but not of it. But I expect I should not be smart enough, either in my dress or my talk; so we must decline, I suppose. What shall I say?"
"Anything you like within the limits of truth."
"Paul won't come, and I can't because I have not a proper frock," said Sally, merrily. "I am sorry, and he is not."
"Don't talk nonsense, Sally," said Paul, with an answering laugh. "Any woman can write a decent note of refusal if she chooses."
So the decent note was written and despatched, to be followed by another, rather differently worded, when the second invitation came about a week later, after which they were asked no more. Sally watched the smart carriages drive to and from the station, with their varying loads of visitors, with a passing pang of regret. It was like gazing into a shop-window when you are possessed of no money to buy the tempting wares displayed there.
Paul scarcely gave his gay neighbours a thought; his head was full of plans for the improvement of the place, and it fretted him a little that on every hand he found himself unable to carry out his wishes for the want of the necessary means.
He was not altogether popular: the poor people rather resented the extreme simplicity of his manner of living when they discovered that it was not accompanied by the open-handed liberality which Allison had half led them to expect; the tenant-farmers opposed any change that would touch their pockets; and people of his own class, few and far between in that thinly populated neighbourhood, called once, but found little to interest them in a man of such avowedly eccentric views on things social and religious, and tacitly let the acquaintance drop.
The one exception to this was May Webster, who, half-piqued, half-amused, at the barrier which Paul had chosen to erect between them, determined to break it down. She was coming out of the rectory one afternoon when she met him at the gate.
He lifted his hat, and would have opened the gate to let her pass, but she held it fast looking at him over the top.