arrange about Ida and Constance.’
‘Dear little Connie, I hope she is as nice a little girl as she used to be!’
‘With good training, I think, she will be; and the tutor gives me good accounts of Herbert in this letter.’
‘Shall we have him here on Sunday week?’
‘Yes, I am very anxious to see him. I hope his master gives him more religious instruction than he has ever had, poor boy!’
Though not brilliant or playful, Lord and Lady Northmoor had, it may be perceived, no lack of good p. 75sense in their strange new surroundings. It was hard not to feel like guests on sufferance, and next morning, a Sunday, was wet. However, under their waterproofs and umbrellas trudging along, they felt once more, as Mary said, like themselves, as if they had escaped from their keepers. Nobody on the way had the least idea who the two cloaked figures were, and when they crept into the seat nearest the door they were summarily ejected by a fat, red-faced man, who growled audibly, ‘You’ve no business in my pew!’
However, with the words, ‘Beg your pardon,’ they stepped out with a little amusement in their eyes, when a spruce young woman sprang up from the opposite pew, with a scandalised whisper—
‘Mr. Ruddiman, it’s his Lordship! Allow me, my Lord—your own seat—’
And she marshalled them up to the choir followed closely by Mr. Ruddiman, ruddier than ever, and butcher all over, in a perfect agony of apology, which Lord Northmoor in vain endeavoured to suppress or silence, till, when the guide had pointed to a handsome heavy carved seat with elaborate cushions, he gave a final gasp of, ‘You’ll not remember it in the custom, my Lord,’ and departed, leaving his Lordship almost equally scarlet with annoyance at the place and time of the demonstration, though, happily, the clergyman had not yet appeared, in his long and much-tumbled surplice.
It was a case of a partial restoration of a church in the dawn of such doings, when the horsebox was removed, but the great family could not be routed out of the chancel, so there were the seats, where p. 76the choir ought to have sat, beneath a very ugly east window, bedecked with the Morton arms. In the other division of the seat was a pale lady in black, with a little girl, Lady Adela Morton, no doubt, and opposite were the servants, and the school children sat crowded on the steps. It was not such a service as had been the custom of the Hurminster churches; and the singing, such as it was, depended on the thin shrill voices of the children, assisted by Lady Adela and the mistress; the sermon was dull and long, and altogether there was something disheartening about the whole.
Lady Adela had a gentle, sweet countenance and a simple devout manner; but it was disappointing that she did not attempt to address the newcomers, though they passed her just outside the churchyard, talking to an old man. Lady Kenton would surely have welcomed them.
p. 77CHAPTER XII
THE BURTHEN OF HONOURS
A fearful affair to the new possessors of Northmoor was the matter of morning calls. The first that befell them, as in duty bound, was that from the Vicar. They were peaceably writing their letters in the library, and hoping soon to go out to explore the Park, when Mr. Woodman was announced, and was found a lonely black speck in the big dreary drawing-room, a very state room, indeed, which nobody had ever willingly inhabited. The Vicar was accustomed to be overridden; he was an elderly widower, left solitary in his old age, and of depressed spirits and manner. However, Frank had been used to intercourse with clergy, though his relations with them seemed reversed, and instead of being patronised, he had to take the initiative; or rather, they touched each other’s cold, shy, limp hands, and sat upright in their chairs, and observed upon the appropriate topic of early frosts, which really seemed to be affecting themselves.
There was a little thaw when Lord Northmoor asked about the population, larger, alas, than the p. 78congregation might have seemed to show, and Mary asked if there were much poverty, and was answered that there was much suffering in the winter, there was not much done for the poor except by Lady Adela.
‘You must tell us how we can assist in any way.’
The poor man began to brighten. ‘It will be a great comfort to have some interest in the welfare of the parish taken here, my Lord. The influence hitherto has not been fortunate. Miss Morton, indeed—latterly—but, poor thing, if I may be allowed to say so, she is flighty—and uncertain—no wonder—’
At that moment Lady Adela was ushered in, and the Vicar looked as if caught in talking treason, while a fresh nip of frost descended on the party.
Not that the lady was by any means on stiff terms with the Vicar, whom, indeed, she daily consulted on parochial subjects, and she had the gracious, hereditary courtesy of high breeding; but she always averred that this same drawing-room chilled her, and she was fully persuaded that any advance towards familiarity would lead to something obnoxious on the part of the newcomers, so that the proper relations between herself and them could only be preserved by a judicious entrenchment of courtesy. Still, it was more the manner of the Vicar than of herself that gave the impression of her being a formidable autocrat. After the frost had been again languidly discussed, Mr. Woodman faltered out, ‘His Lordship was asking—was so good as to ask—how to assist in the parish.’
Lady Adela knew how scarce money must be, p. 79so she hesitated to mention subscriptions, and only said, ‘Thank you—very kind.’
‘Is there any one I could read to?’ ventured Mary.
‘Have you been used to the kind of thing?’ asked Lady Adela, not unkindly, but in a doubting tone.
‘No, I never could before; but I do wish to try to do something.’
The earnest humility of the tone was touching, the Vicar and the autocrat looked at one another, and the former suggested, ‘Old Swan!’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Adela, ‘old Swan lives out at Linghill, which is not above half a mile from this house, but too far off for me to visit constantly. I shall be very much obliged if you can undertake the cottages there.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mary, as heartily as if she were receiving a commission from the Bishop of the diocese.
‘Did not Miss Morton mention something about a boys’ class?’ said Frank. ‘I have been accustomed to a
