“Not at all; I am warm with my walk. I don’t know why I should have shivered,” he added. “It was like the feeling you have when people say somebody’s ‘walking over your grave.’”
Mr. Preen received his son coldly, but not unkindly; Mrs. Preen did the same; she was led by her husband’s example in all things. Tea, though it was so early, was prepared at once, with a substantial dish for the traveller; and they sat down to it in the parlour.
It was a long room with a beam running across the low ceiling. A homely room, with a coarse red-and-green carpet and horse-hair chairs. A few ornaments of their own (for the furniture belonged to the house), relics of better days, were disposed about; and Jane had put on the table a glass of early primroses. The two windows, tall and narrow, answered to those in the Buttery. Oliver surveyed the room in silent dismay: it wore so great a contrast to the French salons at Tours to which he was accustomed. He gave them the details of his aunt’s death and of her affairs.
When tea was over, Mr. Preen shut himself into the Buttery; Mrs. Preen retired to the kitchen to look after Nancy, who had to be watched, like most young servants, as you watch a sprightly calf. Jane and Oliver went out again, Jane taking the way to the Inlets. This time she sat down facing the brook. The dark trees were behind them, the clear stream flowed past in a gentle murmur; nothing but fields beyond. It was a solitary spot.
“What do you call this place—the Inlets?” cried Oliver. “Why is it called so?”
“I’m sure I don’t know: because of those two openings from the road, I suppose. I like to sit here; it is so quiet. Oliver, how came Aunt Emily to sink all her money in an annuity?”
“For her own benefit, of course; it nearly doubled her income. She did it years ago.”
“And you did not know that she had nothing to leave?”
“No one knew. She kept the secret well.”