The sound of the bell came to the ears of two ladies who had been for some time placidly expecting it. They were seated in a small but charming room filled with soft, shaded light and warmth and color, an open piano and dainty pictures and china, and a well-littered writing-table all contributing to the air of accustomed luxury which pervaded it. The elder lady—that Mrs. Hammond whom we saw talking to the curate on the day of the old rector’s funeral—looked up expectantly as Mr. Clode entered, and, extending to him a podgy white hand covered with rings, began to chide him in a rich full voice for being so late. “I have been dying,” she said cheerfully, “to hear what is the fate before us, Mr. Clode. What is he like?”
“Well,” he answered, taking with a word of thanks the cup of tea which Laura offered him, “I have one surprise in store for you. He is comparatively young.”
“Sixty?” said Mrs. Hammond interrogatively.
“Forty?” said Laura, raising her eyebrows.
“No,” Clode replied, smiling and stirring his tea, “you must guess again. He is twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six! You are joking,” exclaimed the elder lady. While Laura opened her eyes very wide, but said nothing yet.
“No,” said the curate. “He told me himself that he was not born until 1854.”
The two ladies were loud in their surprise then, while for a moment the curate sipped his tea in silence. The brass kettle hissed and bubbled on the hob. The tea-set twinkled cheerfully on the wicker table, and faint scents of flowers and fabrics filled the room with an atmosphere which he had long come to associate with Laura. It was Laura Hammond, indeed, who had introduced him to this new world. The son of an accountant living in a small Lincolnshire town, he owed his clerical profession to his mother’s ardent wish that he should rise in the world. His father was not wealthy, and, before he came as curate to Claversham, Mr. Clode had had no experience of society. Then, alighting: on a sudden in the midst of much such a small town as his native place, he found himself astonishingly transmogrified into a person of social importance. He found every door open to him, and among them the Hammonds’, who were admitted to be the first people in the town. He fell in easily enough with the “new learning,” but the central figure in the novel pleasant world of refinement continued throughout to be Laura Hammond.
Much petting had somewhat spoiled him, and it annoyed him now, as he sat sipping his tea, to observe that the ladies were far from displeased with his tidings. “If he is a young man, he is sure not to be evangelical,” said Mrs. Hammond decisively. “That is well. That is a comfort, at any rate.”
“He will play tennis, I dare say,” said Laura.