William walked over to the Rectory. He asked first for Miss Wagget—she was out; then for the rector—so was he.
“Are you quite sure the ladies are out—both?” he inquired, lingering.
“Yes, Sir. Miss Darkwell drove down with the mistress to the church, about the new cushions, I think.”
“Oh! then I’ll call another time;” and William’s countenance brightened as he looked down on the pretty spire, and away he went on the wings of hope.
The church door was open, and sexton and clerk were there, and William, looking round the empty pews and up to the galleries, inquired for Miss Wagget. He was not lucky. The sexton mistook the inquiry for Mr. Wagget, and directed William to the vestry-room, at whose door he knocked with a beating heart, and entering, found the rector examining the register for the year ’48.
“Ha!—found me out? Tracked to my lair,” said he, saluting William with a wave of his hand, and a kindly smiling. “Not a word, though, till this is done—just a minute or two. Sit down.”
“I’ll wait in the church, Sir,” said William, and slipped out to renew his search. But his news was disappointing. The ladies had driven away, neither clerk nor sexton could tell whither, except that it was through High Street; and William mounted the elevated ground about the yew tree, and gazed along the High Street, but all in vain, and along the upward road to Treworth, but equally without result: and the voice of the rector, who thought he was admiring the landscape, recalled him.
Mr. Wagget was not only an honourable and a religious man—he was kindly and gay; he enjoyed everything—his trees and his flowers, his dinner, his friends, even his business, but, above all things, his books; and herein was a powerful sympathy with the younger student, who was won besides to confidence by the genial spirits of the good man.
The loneliness of Gilroyd, too—insupportable, had it not been for the vicinity of Violet—made his company very welcome. So, falling into discourse, it naturally befell that William came to talk of that which lay nearest his heart at that moment—his unaccountable adventure of the night before.
“Very curious, and, as it seems to me, quite inexplicable,” said Doctor Wagget, very much interested. “The best authenticated thing I’ve heard—much the best—of the kind. You must tell it all over again. It’s the best and most satisfactory case I know.”