‘I don’t think I will go into the drawing-room to-night, said the Vicar, wheeling his chair round to the fire when the table had been cleared. ‘I’m sure you haven’t so good a fire as this in there.’
Mrs. Clare admitted that the drawing-room fire was not so good as it might be.
‘Very well, then, we’ll finish the evening here. If these two young men want to smoke, they can go to Ted’s room.’
Mr. Gerard declared that he did not want to smoke. He was much too comfortable where he was. And then the Vicar began to question him about his profession, what such and such men were doing, and what these new men were like who had won reputation lately. Gerard talked best when he talked of his own calling, and Celia, working point lace in a corner by the fire, thought that he looked really handsome when he was animated. It was a face so different from all those prosperous, fresh-coloured, country-bred faces that her daily life had shown her; a face marked with the strongest determination, vivified by a powerful intellect. The girl’s observant eye noted every characteristic in that interesting countenance. She saw, too, that the young man’s black frock coat had undergone harder wear than any garment she had ever seen worn by her brother; that his boots were of a thick and useful kind, and lacked the style of a fashionable maker; that he wore a silver watch-chain, and exhibited none of the trinkets affected by prosperous youth.
Now Celia Clare was not fond of poverty. She considered it a necessary evil, but liked to give it as wide a berth as possible. Any visiting she did amongst her father’s poor went sorely against the grain; and she always wondered how it was that Laura got on so well with the distressed classes. Yet she felt warmly interested in this young doctor, who was evidently most uninterestingly poor.
CHAPTER XXX.
THOU ART THE MAN.
The next day was Sunday. George Gerard was up as soon as it was light, and off for a ramble on the moor before the nine o’clock breakfast. This glimpse of the country was sweet to him, even in the bleak January weather, and he wanted to make the most of his brief opportunity. When he came back to the Vicarage after his walk, he found Edward Clare smoking a cigar in the shrubbery.
‘What a fellow you are to be rambling about in such wintry weather!’ cried Edward, by way of salutation. ‘I want a few minutes’ talk before we go in to breakfast. We may not get a chance of being alone afterwards. Celia is so fussy on Sunday mornings. I should like you to go to church with us, if you don’t object?’
‘I had made up my mind to go. I hope you don’t suppose I have an antipathy to churches?’