‘I beg your pardon. Well, what next?’ said Michael, with an immense effort, sitting down again, and trying to look tranquil. One would almost have said that the worthy doctor’s eulogiums bored him.
‘I daresay you are right,’ said Roger. ‘Anyhow, if she finds a need for friends of that sort, to whom she can be a help, I am glad she has found out the Johnsons; for they can do with a few, “of the right sort,” as you say.’
‘I can’t tell you how much I liked her,’ said Dr. Rowntree, beaming contentedly. ‘There was only one thing that Mrs. Johnson said, that went a little against the grain with me.’
‘While you were settling about the Christmas-tree, I suppose?’ said Roger, politely.
‘That man from London, saving your presence, Michael, is staying at Thorsgarth now. He called with her one morning when she came to the Vicarage——’
‘Oh, come!’ said Roger, hastily, ‘Mrs. Johnson is well known to be a match-maker.’
‘Well,’ said the doctor, a little abashed, ‘we’ll hope that that idea is nothing but imagination, of course.’
‘It may be, or it may not be so,’ here observed Michael, joining in the conversation for the first time, and using his scourge upon himself out of sheer perversity of spirit. ‘But I should say if it is, imagination has got a better handle to lay hold of than it usually has, in Bradstane.’
‘Why—do you know anything? Have you heard anything?’ both the others inquired, turning upon him with greedy eagerness.
‘Nothing in the world,’ said Michael, coldly, ‘except what my own senses tell me. I met them all out riding this morning—Askam and Magdalen; Miss Askam and Gilbert. I immediately thought of that possibility, for some reason—and thought it a very likely one too.’