On the morrow of that sad anniversary which had caused him such distress, the Curate was blest with his usual vigour of faith and courage and philanthropy. An affectionate letter from his mother, enclosing a bank-order for ten pounds, had proved that she was no willing partner in the father's harshness. The day was very bright, his three pupils had left him for their summer holidays, and there happened to be no urgent call for any parochial visits. There was nothing to stop him from a good turn to-day among trowel and chisel and callipers; he would see that every man was at his work, and that every stroke of work was truthful.
Having slurred his early dinner with his usual zest, he was hastening down the passage for his hat and stick, when Thyatira Muggridge came upon him from the pantry, with a jug of toast-and-water in her hand.
"Do'e give me just a minute, sir," she whispered, with a glance at the door of the dining-room where the children had been left; and he followed her into the narrow back-parlour, the head-quarters of his absent pupils.
Mr. Penniloe thought very highly of his housekeeper's judgment and discretion, and the more so perhaps because she had been converted, by a stroke of his own readiness, from the doctrines of the "Antipæedo-Baptists"—as they used to call themselves—to those of the Church of England. Her father, moreover, was one of the chief tenants on the North Devon property of Mr. Penniloe the elder; and simplicity, shrewdness, and honesty were established in that family. So her master was patient with her, though his hat and stick were urgent.
"Would you please to mind, sir,"—began Thyatira, with her thick red arms moving over her apron, like rolling-pins upon pie-crust—"if little Master Mike was to sleep with me a bit, till his brother Master Harry cometh back from school?"
"I dare say you have some good reason for asking; but what is it, Mrs. Muggeridge?" The housekeeper was a spinster, but had received brevet-rank from the village.
"Only that he is so lonesome, sir, in that end hattick, by his little self. You know how he hath been, ever since his great scare; and now some brutes of boys in the village have been telling him a lot of stuff about Spring-heel Jack. They say he is coming into this part now, with his bloody heart and dark lantern. And the poor little lamb hath a window that looks right away over the churchyard. Last night he were sobbing so in his sleep, enough to break his little heart. The sound came all across the lumber-room, till I went and fetched him into my bed, and then he were as happy as an Angel."
"Poor little man! I should have thought of it, since he became so nervous. But I have always tried to make my children feel that the Lord is ever near them."
"He compasseth the righteous round about," Mrs. Muggeridge replied with a curtsey, as a pious woman quoting Holy Writ; "but for all that, you can't call Him company, sir; and that's what these little one's lacks of. Master Harry is as brave as a lion, because he is so much older. But hoping no offence, his own dear mother would never have left that little soul all by himself."