“Perhaps not,” said the Dean, “but in the case of these Sisas it is rather a matter of Hobson’s choice, isn’t it?”
So this affair was settled, and in due course Thomas received his letter of appointment as priest-in-charge of the Sisa station.
On his arrival home a few days later, where he was not expected till the following week, Thomas was so pre-occupied that he scarcely seemed to notice his wife’s affectionate greeting; even the fact that both she and Tabitha were arrayed in smart and unmissionary-like garments escaped him. Dorcas also looked pre-occupied, the truth being that she had asked a few young people, officers and maidens of the place (alas! as it chanced, among them were no clergy or their wives and daughters), to play tennis that afternoon and some of them to stop to supper. Now she was wondering how her austere spouse would take the news. He might be cross and lecture her; when he was both cross and lectured the combination was not agreeable.
A few formal enquiries as to health and a certain sick person were made and answered. Dorcas assured him that they were both quite well, Tabitha especially, and that she had visited the afflicted woman as directed.
“And how was she, dear?” he asked.
“I don’t know, dear,” she answered. “You see, when I got to the house I met Mrs. Tomley, the Rector’s wife, at the door, and she said, rather pointedly I thought, that she and her husband were looking after the case, and though grateful for the kind assistance you had rendered, felt that they need not trouble us any more, as the patient was a parishioner of theirs.”
“Did they?” said Thomas with a frown. “Considering all things—well, let it be.”
Dorcas was quite content to do so, for she was aware that her husband’s good-heartedness was apt to be interpreted as poaching by some who should have known better, and that in fact the ground was dangerous.
“I have something to tell you,” she began nervously, “about an arrangement I have made for this afternoon.”
Mr. Bull, who was drinking a tumbler of water—he was a teetotaller and non-smoker, and one of his grievances was that his wife found it desirable to take a little wine for the Pauline reason—set it down and said: