“To think you should recollect it!” said Clare, her eyes suddenly lighting up; and then in an apologetic tone—“It was so old. I allow it was very picturesque and charming to look at; but oh, Edgar, you would not blame me if you knew how dreadfully tumble-down and miserable it was inside. The rain kept coming in, and when the brook was flooded in winter it came right into the kitchen; and the children kept having fevers. I felt very much disposed to cry over it, I can tell you; but you would not have blamed me had you seen how shocking it was inside.”
“I wonder if Mistress Arden, in a ruff and a farthingale, would have thought about the drainage,” he answered, laughing. “Fancy my blaming you, Clare! I tell you it is your village, and you shall do what you like with it. Is that Mr. Fielding at his gate? Let us cross over and shake hands with him before we go any further. He is not so old, surely, as he once was.”
“It is we who are old,” said Clare, with the first laugh that had yet come from her lips. “He is putting on his gloves to go and call on you, Edgar. The bell-ringers must have made it known everywhere. Mr. Fielding and Dr. Somers will come to-day, and the Thornleighs and Evertons to-morrow, and after that everybody; now see if it does not happen just as I say!”
“Let us stop the first of these visits,” said Edgar, and he went forward holding out his hand, while the parson at the gate, buttoning his grey gloves, peered at him through a pair of short-sighted eyes. “It will be very kind of you to name yourself, Sir, for I am very short-sighted,” the Rector said, looking at him with that semi-suspicion which is natural to a rustic of the highest as well as the lowest social position. The newcomer was a stranger, and therefore had little right and no assignable place in the village world. Mr. Fielding, who was short-sighted besides, peered at him very doubtfully from the puckered corners of his eyes.
“Don’t you know me?” said Edgar; and “Oh, Mr. Fielding, don’t you know Edgar?” came with still greater earnestness from the lips of Clare.
“It is not possible!” said Mr. Fielding, very decidedly; and then he let his slim umbrella drop out of his fingers, and held out both his hands. “Is it really you, my dear boy!” he said. “Excuse my blind eyes. If you had been my own son I would not have known you. I was on my way to call. But though this is not so solemn or so correct it will do as well. And Clare: Will you come in and have some breakfast? It cannot be much past your breakfast hour.”
“Nor yours either,” said Clare; “it is so naughty of you and so wrong of you to sit up like that, when you might just as well read in daylight, and go to bed when everybody else does. But we don’t follow such a bad example. We mean to have breakfast always by eight o’clock.”
Mr. Fielding gave a little sigh, and shook his venerable head. “That is all very pretty, my dear, and very nice when you can do it; but you know it never lasts. Anyhow, don’t let us stand here. Come in, my dear boy, come in, and welcome home again. And welcome to your own, Edgar,” he added, turning quickly round as he led them into his study, a large low room, looking out upon the trim parsonage garden. He put out both his hands as he said this, and grasped both those of Edgar, and looked not at all disinclined to throw himself upon his neck. “Welcome to your own,” he repeated fervently, and his eyes strayed beyond Edgar’s head, as if he were confronting and defying some one. And then he added more solemnly, “And God bless you, and enable you to fill your high position like a man. Amen. I wonder what the old Doctor will say now.”
“What should he say?” said Edgar, fun dancing in his bright brown eyes; “and how is he? I suppose he is unchangeable, like everything here.”
“Not unchangeable,” said Mr. Fielding, with a slight half-perceptible shake of his head at the levity, one of those momentary assumptions of the professional which most old clergymen indulge in now and then; “nothing is unchangeable in this transitory world. But old Somers is as steady as most things,” he added, with a responsive glance of amusement. “We go on quarrelling, he and I, but it would be hard upon us if we had to part. But tell me about yourself, Edgar, which is more interesting. When did you get home?”