“Grubley.—We are asked to state that Benotti’s Original Circus, one of the oldest established and most complete in the kingdom, will give two performances daily at Bounders Green during the whole of next week.”
There seemed little enough in such an announcement to bring disquiet to the curate’s mind. Possibly, he cherished a conscientious objection to circuses, and remembered that, as Grubley and Great Wabbleton were only three miles apart, a section of the S. Athanasius flock might be allured next week by the meretricious attraction at Bounders Green. Yet even such solicitude for the welfare of the flock of which he was the assistant shepherd seemed scarcely to account either for his obvious distress, or for the fragments of soliloquy that escaped him at every fresh study of the paper.
“Here, of all places in the world—absolute ruin—no, not on any account!”
At length, throwing down the Post, the curate seized his hat, started at a rapid pace for the Vicarage, and was soon seated tête-à-tête with his superior, an amiable old gentleman with a portly presence and an abiding faith in his assistant’s ability to do the whole work of the parish unaided.
“Vicar, do you think you can spare me for the next week or so? The fact is, I am feeling the want of a change badly, and should be glad of a few days to run down to my people in Devonshire.”
“My dear Todd, how unfortunate! I have just made arrangements to be away myself next week—and—and the week following. I am going up to London to stay with my old friend Canon Crozier. I was just coming to tell you so when you called. If you don’t mind waiting till I return, I’ve no doubt we can manage to spare you for a day or two. Sorry you’re not feeling well. By-the-bye, has that tiresome woman Mrs. Dunderton been worrying you? She came here yesterday about those candles, and threatened to write to the Bishop and denounce us as Popish conspirators. Couldn’t you go and talk to her, and see if you can bring her to a more reasonable frame of mind?”
The talk drifted to church and parish matters, and, as soon as he decently could, the curate took his leave, looking very much more depressed and anxious than ever. As he raised the latch of the Vicarage gate, a voice, whose sound he knew only too well, called to him by name; and, turning, he beheld Miss Caroline Cope, the Vicar’s daughter, pursuing him skittishly down the garden path. Miss Caroline was not young, neither was she amiable, and her appearance was quite remarkably unattractive. All this would have mattered little to the curate, but for the fact that she had lately shown for him a marked partiality that had inspired him with considerable uneasiness. At this moment, when his mind was troubled with other matters, her unwelcome appearance aroused in his breast a feeling of extreme irritation.
“don’t run away from me.”