“Yes,” he muttered softly to himself, nodding his head as he looked about him—“I am bound to admit that when one has slept—or tried to sleep—for a few weeks, in a narrow berth aboard an evil-smelling sailing vessel, with a scarcity of blankets, and no pillows worth mentioning, this”—he looked round the big bed, and smiled—“this is a very decent apology for Heaven. And—such being the case—I want to stop in Paradise as long as possible.”
He stretched out his hand, and pulled the bell-rope. In a moment or two, the young servant Harry made his appearance—coming softly into the room, and regarding his master with some surprise. Philip Chater, quick to take his cue from the other’s expression, glanced carelessly at Dandy Chater’s watch, which hung near his head.
“Rather early, Harry? Yes—I know it is; but I’m restless this morning. I shall get dressed at once. Put me out some things—you know what I want; I don’t want to be bothered about it—and get my bath ready. Oh—by the way”—he called out, as the young man was moving away—“I shall go to church.”
The servant stopped, as though he had been shot—even came back a pace or two towards the bed. The expression of his face was such an astonished one, that Philip knew that the day, from a point of view of good luck, had begun very badly.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Harry, with something very like the flicker of a smile about his mouth.
“I said,” repeated Philip Chater, slowly and emphatically, being determined to brave the matter out—“that I should go to church.”
“Very good, sir.” The young man had recovered his composure, and walked through into the adjoining bath-room, after another quick glance at his master.
“Ah—Dandy Chater was evidently not a professing Christian,” muttered Philip. “I’m half sorry now that I suggested going; but I suppose it’s best to take the bull by the horns, and plunge among the people I shall have to meet as rapidly as possible. Well, if they single me out as a lost sheep, and call me publicly to repentance, I can’t help it. But I shouldn’t be surprised if the living were in my gift; in which case, they may be disposed to forgive me, and treat me leniently.”
Finding, to his satisfaction, that the clothes belonging to the late Dandy Chater fitted his successor as accurately as though made for him, Philip went down to breakfast in an improved frame of mind. After breakfast, when he lounged out into the grounds, there came another of those little trials to his nerves, which he was destined thereafter often to experience.
Coming near to the stables, a dog—a fine animal of the spaniel breed—leapt out suddenly, with joyous barks, to meet him; came within a foot or two—sniffed at him suspiciously—and then fled, barking furiously. Turning, in some discomfiture, he came almost face to face with the servant Harry, who was looking at him, he thought, curiously.