Dr. Haworth had fallen in with every suggestion with the most eager, ready sympathy; and Sir John, who before coming to Witanbury had regarded him as a pacifist and pro-German, had come really to like and respect him. So it was that now, as he came back from the Deanery, and up to the gate of the Trellis House, he was in a softer, more yielding mood than usual.
Sir Jacques hurried out to meet him. “Is everything all right?”
“Yes—everything’s settled. But it’s your responsibility, not mine!”
“I’ve been wondering, Sir John, whether the Dean reminded you that we shall require a wedding ring?”
“No, he did not.” Sir John Blake looked rather taken aback. “I wonder what I’d better do?” he muttered helplessly.
“You and Lady Blake had better go into the town and buy one,” said Sir Jacques. “I don’t feel that we can put that job on poor little Rose. She’s had quite enough to do as it is—and gallantly she’s done it!”
And as Sir John began to look cross and undecided, the other said with a touch of sharpness, “Of course if you’d rather not do it, I’ll buy the ring myself. But I’ve been neglecting my work this morning.”
Ashamed of his ungraciousness, as the other had meant him to be, Sir John said hastily, “Of course I’ll get it! I was only wondering whether I hadn’t better go alone.”
“Lady Blake would be of great use in choosing it, and for the matter of that, in trying it on. If you wait here a moment I’ll go and fetch her. She’s got her hat on, I know.”
So it happened that, in three or four minutes, just long enough for Sir John to begin to feel impatient, Jervis’s mother came out of the Trellis House. She was smiling up into the great surgeon’s face, and her husband told himself that it was an extraordinary thing how this wedding had turned their minds—all their minds—away from Jervis’s coming ordeal.