"Just one moment more," she said breathlessly. "Dinah will not mind our being late."
Malcolm did not mind it either. He sat contentedly flicking the flies from Brown Becky's glossy sides and listening to the distant cawing of rooks.
What a peaceful, drowsy sort of place Rotherwood was! The wide village street seemed empty, with the exception of a black collie lying asleep in the middle of the road, and a patient donkey belonging to a travelling tinker. The clean, sleek country sparrows were enjoying a dust bath, and a long-legged chicken—evidently a straggler from the brood—was pecking fitfully at a cabbage stalk, unmindful of the alarmed clucking of the maternal hen.
When Elizabeth rejoined them the vicar was with her, and she introduced him to Malcolm.
Mr. Charrington had been a handsome man in his youth; but a sedentary life and a somewhat injudicious burning of the midnight oil had tried his constitution. He had grown pale and thin, and his shoulders were slightly round, so that he looked older than his years. Malcolm thought Cedric's name of Dr. Dryasdust was not an inapt title. His eyes were a little sunken, though very bright and keen, and his manner was extremely courteous. He spoke very civilly to Malcolm.
"Mr. Charrington is hardly my idea of a country vicar," he observed as they drove away.
"Perhaps not," returned Elizabeth quickly, "but he is a very conscientious clergyman, and his people's welfare is very near his heart. He is a great etymologist and archaeologist, and at times he is so immersed in his studies that but for the care of his excellent housekeeper, Mrs. Finch, he would often forget to eat his dinner. Mr. Carlyon often tells us amusing stories of the vicar's absence of mind."
"Could you not remember one of them, Betty?" suggested Cedric. But Elizabeth was not to be cajoled into repeating them. She respected Mr. Charrington far too highly, she remarked, to make merry at his expense.
"My friends' oddities are always sacred to me," she said quite seriously. "Most people have their own little failings and idiosyncrasies, but one need not make copy out of them. Don't you agree with me, Mr. Herrick, that there is too little sense of honour in these matters? To raise a laugh, or to sharpen their own wit, many people will expose their best friend to ridicule."
"Oh, shut up, Betty," remonstrated her brother, "it is too bad to moralise; and after all old Dr. Dryasdust is a capital subject for sport."