It was at length the day of Roland's departure, and he was holding a final interview with Annabel. They stood at the glass doors of the study window, open to the garden, and the warm May sun shone in gaily, making the crape on Annabel's silk dress look hot and rusty. The once untidy study, when they were all boys and girls together, had been renovated with a green carpet and delicately-papered walls; the young parson now called it his.
Considering Roland's deficiencies on the score of forethought, he had really organized the plans for his future life with a great deal of wisdom. Sunny Mead was to be their sole home, and Annabel chief cash-keeper in regard to ready money. On that he was resolved, honestly avowing that he was not to be trusted with money in his pocket: it was sure to go. The residence in Portland Place, which Sir Richard had only held on a lease, had been given up: there was to be no town house, no fashion, no gaiety. Annabel seconded him in all, urging moderation strenuously. He was going up now to make his bow to the Prince of Wales at a leéve: and it was to be hoped he would accomplish it with passable decorum: and Annabel would be presented to the Queen on the first favourable opportunity, after she should be Lady Yorke. So far, that was due from their position; but there the exigencies of fashionable society would for them end. Sunny Mead would be their home; and, it could not be doubted, a very happy one. They are talking of the prospect, now as they stand together: and to both it is one of rose colour.
"But for going to Port Natal, Annabel, there's no knowing how I might have turned out--a regular drawling idler about town, as some of the Yorkes have been before me. I might have gone in for all kinds of folly, and come to no end of grief. We shall be safe down at Sunny Mead, and live like--like----" Roland stops for a simile.
"Rational people," puts in Annabel with a smile.
"Fighting-cocks," says Roland. "I shall make a good farmer."
"But, Roland," she rejoins, dubiously, "I hope you'll not discharge the bailiff until you feel that you are fully competent to the management. You don't know much of farming yet."
"Not know much of farming!" exclaims Roland, his eyes opening with surprise. "After all my experience at Port Natal! Look at the pigs I had to manage--obstinate, grunting animals--and the waggons and carts I was put to drive--filled with calves sometimes! I'm not obliged to take the threshing and mowing myself, you know. As to the bailiff, he shall stay on until you send him away, if it's two years to come."
She bends her blushing face a little forward, plucking an early rosebud. Roland takes it from her and puts it in his coat. On her finger flashes a valuable diamond ring, the pledge of their engagement.
"We won't have a frying-pan in the house, Annabel. I can't bear to see one since that failure at Port Natal."
She turns her laughing eyes on him. Roland honestly thinks they are the truest, sweetest, best the world ever contained, and feels he can never be thankful enough that he is to call them his.