'Dear Roy, how we shall miss him!' sighed Olive, as she laid the letter down.
'Polly more than any one,' observed Mildred, thinking how strange it would be to see one bright face without the other close to it.
The new curate was rather a tame affair after this.
'His name is Hugh Marsden, and he is to live at Miss Farrer's, the milliner,' announced Olive one day, when she had received a letter from Richard. 'Miss Farrer has two very nice rooms looking over the market-place. Her last lodger was a young engineer, and it made a great difference to her income when he left her. Richard says he is a "Queen's man, and a very nice fellow;" he is only in deacon's orders.'
'Let us see what Chriss has to say about him in her letter,' returned Mildred; but she contemplated a little ruefully the crabbed, irregular writing, every word looking like a miniature edition of Contradiction Chriss herself.
'Mr. Marsden has arrived,' scrawled Chriss, 'and has just had tea here. I don't think we shall like him at all. Roy says he is a jolly fellow, and is fond of cricket and fishing, and those sort of things, but he looks too much like a big boy for my taste; I don't like such large young men; and he has big hands and feet and a great voice, and his laugh is as big as the rest of him. I think him dreadfully ugly, but Polly says "No, he has nice honest eyes."
'He tried to talk to Polly and me; only wasn't it rude, Aunt Milly? He called me my dear, and asked me if I liked dolls. I felt I could have withered him on the spot, only he was so stupid and obtuse that he took no notice, and went on about his little sister Sophy, who had twelve dolls, whom she dressed to represent the twelve months in the year, and how she nearly broke her heart when he sat down on them by accident and smashed July.'
Roy gave a comical description of the whole thing and Chriss's wrathful discomfiture.
'We have just had great fun,' he wrote; 'the Rev. Hugh has just been here to tea; he is a capital fellow—up to larks, and with plenty of go in him, and with a fine deep voice for intoning; he is wild about training the choir already. He talked a great deal about his mother and sisters; he is an only son. I bet you anything, you women will be bored to death with Dora, Florence, and Sophy. If they are like him they are not handsome. One thing I must tell you, he riled Contradiction awfully by asking her if she liked dolls; she was Pugilist Pug then and no mistake. You should have seen the air with which she drew herself up. "I suppose you take me for a little girl," quoth she. Marsden's face was a study. "I am afraid you will take her for a spoilt one," says Dad, patting her shoulder, which only made matters worse. "I think your sister must be very silly with her twelve seasons," bursts out Chriss. "I would sooner do algebra than play with dolls; but if you will excuse me, I have my Cæsar to construe;" and she walked out of the room with her chin in the air, and every curl on her head bristling with wrath. Marsden sat open-mouthed with astonishment, and Dad was forced to apologise; and there was Polly all the time "behaving like a little lady."'
'As though Polly could do wrong,' observed Mildred with a smile, as she finished Roy's ridiculous effusion.