“Yes. I say, would you like to come and see my pigs?”
Now pigs were, next to red villas, the main interest of Mr. Atterton’s existence, and an invitation to visit them in his company was a great honour. What was a possible prospective son-in-law to do?
“Thank you very much,” said Andy, following his host, and endeavouring to take an intelligent interest in queer-looking and precious animals that rather resembled a wild boar than the domestic porker. He must have succeeded, for on leaving to be in time for evensong, he received an immense compliment.
“You’re like me,” said Mr. Atterton. “Pigs more in your line than girls and tea-drinking, hey?”
CHAPTER X
The year was just at that most pleasant pause between hay-time and harvest, and the Vicarage brooded in the sun amongst the full-leaved trees like an architectural embodiment of repose. Quiet joys seemed to cluster round its broad windows like the roses, and a very faint ‘Coo-coo!’ from the pigeons in Mr. Thorpe’s yard sounded like a lullaby heard only by the soul—something too deeply peaceful to be real.
And in spite of all that, there were three broken hearts, or cracked hearts—anyway, hearts not in a comfortable condition—under that very roof.
For Elizabeth had receded, mentally and physically, to a remote distance. She first departed to some inaccessible region in a sort of glory of white draperies and careless smiles when Andy caught sight of her in the window-seat across the blank distance of her mother’s drawing-room. It seemed then incredibly audacious that he could ever have dreamed what he had dreamed.
In addition to which she had actually gone to stay with an aunt for a week, a fact of which Andy was unaware; and he haunted the lanes where he had sometimes met her in the past with so sad a countenance, that such of his parishioners as met him reported it was true—he had ruined his stomach with over-eating—no young feller with a good house and a decent income would go about like that if he could digest his food. There was no doubt a very good reason for his abstaining from butter, as Mrs. Jebb told Miss Kirke he continued to do.