"Nearly as old as I am. I wonder whether we shall like her?"
"I hope you understood what I said at dinner-time. There is to be no intimacy until we have decided that Melicent is a fit companion for you. No intimacy, mind."
His voice was even and quiet, low-pitched and cultivated. He was a handsome, dark man, with regular features, and a cold, blue eye; clean shaven but for a straight line of black whisker down each cheek, which made him look vaguely out of date.
His daughter looked at him with a sidelong glance.
"All right, father," she said, in a kind of formula, adding, in an injured tone: "I should have thought you might take one of us to meet her."
"I do not know what luggage there may be."
Mr. Cooper would not have said, "I don't know," for the world; and the fact was typical of his extreme correctness.
"Where is your mother?" he asked, when the last strap was adjusted. "I promised her a lift as far as the Mill. Go, Madeline, and tell her I am ready."
The girl slouched away, with a bored expression; and the parson, having fetched the dust-rug and whip, walked the mare out of the yard and up to the door of the square, uncompromising grey stone Vicarage.
Nothing could have been finer than the prospect. The church and Vicarage stood near the head of the Dale, close to the bolder, wilder, more heathery part, and looked down on the valleyland, the trout stream and rich meadows below. The minutes ticked on, while the vicar waited. Presently Madeline emerged.