The time went on; three years of it; Captain Monk had fully settled down in his ancestral home, and the neighbours had learnt what a domineering, self-willed man he was. But he had his virtues. He was kind in a general way, generous where it pleased him to be, inordinately attached to his children, and hospitable to a fault.
On the last day of every year, as the years came round, Captain Monk, following his late father’s custom, gave a grand dinner to his tenants; and a very good custom it would have been, but that he and they got rather too jolly. The parson was always invited—and went; and sometimes a few of Captain Monk’s personal friends were added.
Christmas came round this year as usual, and the invitations to the dinner went out. One came to Squire Todhetley, a youngish man then, and one to my father, William Ludlow, who was younger than the Squire. It was a green Christmas; the weather so warm and genial that the hearty farmers, flocking to Leet Hall, declared they saw signs of buds sprouting in the hedges, whilst the large fire in the Captain’s dining-room was quite oppressive.
Looking from the window of the parsonage sitting-room in the twilight, while drawing on his gloves, preparatory to setting forth, stood Mr. West. His wife was bending over an easy-chair, in which their only child, little Alice, lay back, covered up. Her breathing was quick, her skin parched with fever. The wife looked sickly herself.
“Well, I suppose it is time to go,” observed Mr. West, slowly. “I shall be late if I don’t.”
“I rather wonder you go at all, George,” returned his wife. “Year after year, when you come back from this dinner, you invariably say you will not go to another.”
“I know it, Mary. I dislike the drinking that goes on—and the free conversation—and the objectionable songs; I feel out of place in it all.”
“And the Captain’s contemptuous treatment of yourself, you might add.”
“Yes, that is another unwelcome item in the evening’s programme.”