"That's a kind fellow, the vicar," said Sir Harry; "a bit too simple; but if other sirs were like him, there would be more folk in the church to hear the sermon!"
When Sir Harry made this speech, he and I were sitting in the boat, the light evening air hardly filled the sails, and we were tacking slowly back and forward on the mere, along the shore of Golden Friars. It was a beautiful evening in August, and the little speech and our loitering here were caused by the sweet music that pealed from the organ through the open church windows. The good old vicar was a fine musician; and often in the long summer and autumn evenings, the lonely old man visited the organ-loft and played those sweet and solemn melodies that so well accorded with the dreamlike scene.
It was the music that recalled the vicar to Sir Harry's thoughts—but his liking for him was not all founded upon that, nor even upon his holy life and kindly ways. It was this: that when he read the service at mamma's funeral, the white-haired vicar, who remembered her a beautiful child, wept—and tears rolled down his old cheeks as with upturned eyes he repeated the noble and pathetic farewell.
When it was over, Sir Harry, who had a quarrel with the vicar before, came over and shook him by the hand, heartily and long, speaking never a word—his heart was too full. And from that time he liked him, and did not know how to show it enough.
In these long, lazy tacks, sweeping slowly by the quaint old town in silence, broken only by the ripple of the water along the planks, and the sweet and distant swell of the organ across the water, the time flew by. The sun went down in red and golden vapours, and the curfew from the ivied tower of Golden Friars sounded over the darkened lake—the organ was heard no more—and the boat was making her slow way back again to Dorracleugh.
Sir Harry looked at me very kindly, in silence, for awhile. He arranged a rug about my feet, and looked again in my face.
"Sometimes you look so like bonny Mabel—and when you smile—ye mind her smile? 'Twas very pretty."
Then came a silence.
"I must tell Renwick, when the shooting begins, to send down a brace of birds every day to the vicar," said Sir Harry. "I'll be away myself in a day or two, and I shan't be back again for three weeks. I'll take a house in London, lass—I won't have ye moping here too long—you'd begin to pine for something to look at, and folks to talk to, and sights to see."
I was alarmed, and instantly protested that I could not imagine any life more delightful than this at Golden Friars.