So that the rector was not having a very sunny time, albeit the heat of conflict kept him warm; and he threw back his head and set his fair pleasant face very hard as he strode about the town, his long-tailed black coat flapping behind him. He hugged himself more than ever on the one thing which his opponents could not take from him. When all was said and done, he must still be rector of Claversham. If his promotion had not brought him as much happiness as he had expected, if he had not been able to do in his new position all he had hoped, the promotion and the position were yet undeniable. Knowing so well all the circumstances of his appointment, he never gave two thoughts to the curious story Kate Bonamy had told him. He was sorry that he had treated her so cavalierly, and more than once he had thought with a regret almost tender of the girl and the interview. But, for the rest, he treated it as the ignorant invention of the enemy. Possibly on the strength of certain ’Varsity prejudices he was a little too prone to exaggerate the ignorance of Claversham.
On the day before the bazaar a visitor arrived in Claversham, in the shape of a small, dark, sharp-featured man, with a peculiarly alert manner, whom the reader will remember to have met in the Temple. Jack Smith, for he it was—we parted from him last at Euston Station—may have come over on his own motion, or acting upon a hint from Mr. Bonamy, who, since the refusal of Gregg’s offer, had thought more and more of the future which lay before his girls. The house had seemed more and more dull, not to him as himself, but to him considering it in the night-watches through their eyes. Hitherto the lawyer had not encouraged the young Londoner’s visits, perhaps because he dreaded the change in his way of life he might be forced to make. But now, whether he had given him a hint to come or not, he received him with undoubted cordiality.
Almost the first question Jack asked, Daintry hanging over the back of his chair and Kate smiling in more subdued radiance opposite him, was about his friend, the rector. Fortunately, Mr. Bonamy was not in the room. “And how about Lindo?” he asked. “Have you seen much of him, Kate?”
“No, we have not seen much of him,” she answered, getting up to put something straight which was not much awry before.
“Father has served him with a writ, though,” Daintry explained, nodding her head seriously.
Jack whistled. “A writ!” he exclaimed. “What about?”
“About the sheep in the churchyard. Mr. Lindo turned them out,” Kate explained hurriedly, as if she wished to hear no more upon the subject.
But Jack was curious; and gradually he drew from them the story of the rector’s iniquities, and acquired, in the course of it, a pretty correct notion of the state of things in the parish. He whistled still more seriously then. “It seems to me that the old man has been putting his foot in it here,” he said.
“He has,” Daintry answered solemnly, nodding any number of times. “No end!”
“And yet he is the very best of fellows,” Jack replied, rubbing his short black hair in honest vexation. “Don’t you like him?”