He shook his head.
“Scarcely so,” he replied, “at least not necessarily. The sort of ‘getting accustomed’ to things—in reality I was thinking of more than the climate—that I had in my mind—is not of a piece with youth and its natural distaste for monotony. My wife and I often think it must be dreary for you three, and we wish we had it in our power to help you to a little variety. If things had been different with us—if that poor boy of ours had been spared—we should not now be the dull old couple I fear we are.”
His hearers were touched by his simple self-depreciation.
“Dear Mr Ferraby,” said Frances, “you mustn’t speak like that. It is very nice for us to feel that we are always sure of two such kind friends at hand.”
There was more pathos in his allusion than a stranger would have understood, for this same “boy,” of whom he spoke, would by this time have been not far off fifty himself, though to his parents he ever remained the bright, promising young fellow suddenly cut off in his early manhood.
“Who was here before you came, Mr Ferraby?” Eira inquired abruptly.
The little group was seated by this time in the large, square pew, which almost looked like a cosy little room, and even to-day it felt fairly warm.
“Who was here before me?” the old man repeated. “Broadhurst was the last vicar, and before him there was a private chaplain resident at Craig-Morion. That was in its palmy days, when the family spent most of the year here—quite early in this century, that is to say—for I remember Broadhurst telling me that things had been quiet enough during his time, and he was here for nearly twenty years.”
“And you never saw our great-grand-aunt Elizabeth, did you?” Betty inquired. “I think we’ve asked you before.”
“No,” the vicar replied. “Strangely enough, her funeral was one of the first ceremonies at which I officiated—that was in the year forty. She was very ill when I came, and refused to see me, and indeed, for several years before that, she had led a life of utter seclusion. I remember hoping for brighter days coming, for I was young then, and no misanthrope, but they never did, as the elder of her two nephews took a dislike to the place, which his son—a grandson now—seems to have inherited!”