“Lord Spratte,” he announced.
The guest advanced and saw his sister Sophia, his brother Theodore, his nephew and his niece. Lady Sophia, a handsome and self-assured woman of five-and-fifty, the eldest of the family, put aside her book and rose to kiss him. Canon Spratte extended two fingers.
“Good heavens, have you invited me to a family party!”
“Than which, I venture to think, there can be nothing more charming, nothing more beautiful, and nothing more entertaining,” replied the Canon, gaily.
“Theodore is cultivating domesticity,” retorted the peer, with a look at his younger brother. “I believe he wants to be made a bishop.”
“You take nothing seriously, Thomas. It is a failing of which I cannot but recommend you to correct yourself.”
“Stow it, Theodore,” replied the other, unmoved.
Theodore Spratte, Vicar of St. Gregory’s, South Kensington, and Canon of Tercanbury, was the youngest son of the first Earl Spratte, Lord Chancellor of England. He was a handsome man, tall and erect; and his presence was commanding. His comely looks had been to him through life a source of abiding pleasure. He preserved the slenderness, the brisk carriage of youth; and though but little younger than his brother, his fair hair, turning now to grey, remained profuse and curling. His fine blue eyes looked out upon the world with a happy self-confidence, and his mobile, shapely mouth was ever ready to break into a smile. The heartiness of his laughter sufficed to make all and sundry his particular friends. It was pleasant to meet a man who was so clean and fresh, always so admirably dressed, and whose appearance was so prepossessing. But he was nowhere more imposing than in the pulpit; for he wore his cassock and surplice, his scarlet hood, with a reassuring dash which convinced you that here was a pilot in whom you need not hesitate to set your trust. He had a certain gift for oratory. His voice was resonant and well modulated. The charm of his active personality was such that though, in those flowing periods and that wealth of metaphor, amid these sounding, forcible adjectives, the matter of his discourse often escaped you, you felt notwithstanding exhilarated and content. If his sermons redounded to his own honour rather than to the honour of God, it was not Canon Spratte who suffered.
When he was left a widower with two young children, his sister Sophia, who had remained unmarried, came to live with him. In course of time Lionel, his son, grew up, entered the Church, and became his curate. His daughter Winnie was twenty-one, and in her fragile, delicate way as pretty as a shepherdess of Dresden china. She had all the charm of innocence, and such knowledge of the world as three seasons in London and the daily example of her father could give her.
“By the way, Lionel, I suppose you took that wedding at 2.30 yesterday?”