At this critical moment a loud rat-tat sounded at the door, and Mrs Thornton rushed to peep out of the window.
“Horrors, a visitor! Mary will show her into the room, I know she will! That girl has no more sense than a doll! Ruth—Mollie—Wallace! pick up the things on the floor; throw them behind the sofa! Pull the sewing-machine to the wall! There’s no room for anyone to tread! Of all the tiresome, aggravating—”
“Nonsense, dear—nonsense!” cried the vicar, laughing. “Leave things as they are. You have quite sufficient excuse in the fact of expecting a hundred people to-morrow. There will be no room to tread then, if you like!”
He turned towards the door as he spoke, and Mrs Thornton hastily smoothed her hair as it opened wide, and Mary’s eager voice announced—
“If you please, mum, a ’amper!”
“A what?”
The vicar and his wife pressed forward eagerly, and, lo! on the well-worn oilcloth of the passage lay a large wicker hamper, addressed to “Mrs Thornton, The Vicarage, Raby,” and bearing on the label the name of a well-known London fruiterer. To cut the string and tear it open was the work of a moment, when inside was revealed such treasures of hothouse fruits as left the beholders dumb and gasping with admiration.
There in profusion were grapes, peaches, giant strawberries of the deepest red, pineapples,—each one more perfect and tempting than the last, in their dainty, padded cases.
The vicar stood looking on, stroking his chin, and smiling with enjoyment at his wife’s delight, as she bent over her treasures, exclaiming and rapturising like a girl in her teens.
“How lovely! How charming! How delightful! My fruit-table will be a triumph! This is exactly what I needed to give the finishing touch to my preparations! I’ve never seen finer fruit—never! Wallace, Wallace, won’t we be grand?”