"Lying in bed, papa," cried the three children, clapping their hands in triumph.
"What do you say, Miss Sturch?" asked Doctor Chennery.
Miss Sturch smiled as usual, rubbed her hands as usual, cleared her throat softly as usual, looked at the tea-urn, and begged, with the most graceful politeness, to be excused if she said nothing.
"Your turn now, Phippen," said the vicar. "Come, guess what has kept me late this morning."
"My dear friend," said Mr. Phippen, giving the Doctor a brotherly squeeze of the hand, "don't ask me to guess—I know! I saw what you eat at dinner yesterday—I saw what you drank after dinner. No digestion could stand it—not even yours. Guess what has made you late this morning? Pooh! pooh! I know. You dear, good soul, you have been taking physic!"
"Hav'n't touched a drop, thank God, for the last ten years!" said Doctor Chennery, with a look of devout gratitude. "No, no; you're all wrong. The fact is, I have been to church; and what do you think I have been doing there? Listen, Miss Sturch—listen, girls, with all your ears. Poor blind young Frankland is a happy man at last—I have married him to our dear Rosamond Treverton this very morning!"
"Without telling us, papa!" cried the two girls together in their shrillest tones of vexation and surprise. "Without telling us, when you know how we should have liked to see it!"
"That was the very reason why I did not tell you, my dears," answered the vicar. "Young Frankland has not got so used to his affliction yet, poor fellow, as to bear being publicly pitied and stared at in the character of a blind bridegroom. He had such a nervous horror of being an object of curiosity on his wedding-day, and Rosamond, like a kind-hearted girl as she is, was so anxious that his slightest caprices should be humored, that we settled to have the wedding at an hour in the morning when no idlers were likely to be lounging about the neighborhood of the church. I was bound over to the strictest secrecy about the day, and so was my clerk Thomas. Excepting us two, and the bride and bridegroom, and the bride's father, Captain Treverton, nobody knew—"
"Treverton!" exclaimed Mr. Phippen, holding his tea-cup, with the grated ginger in the bottom of it, to be filled by Miss Sturch. "Treverton! (No more tea, dear Miss Sturch.) How very remarkable! I know the name. (Fill up with water, if you please.) Tell me, my dear doctor (many, many thanks; no sugar—it turns acid on the stomach), is this Miss Treverton whom you have been marrying (many thanks again; no milk, either) one of the Cornish Trevertons?"
"To be sure she is!" rejoined the vicar. "Her father, Captain Treverton, is the head of the family. Not that there's much family to speak of now. The Captain, and Rosamond, and that whimsical old brute of an uncle of hers, Andrew Treverton, are the last left now of the old stock—a rich family, and a fine family, in former times—good friends to Church and State, you know, and all that—"