“Are not you coming, Mr. May?” she said softly, looking at him with the least little shrug of her shoulders.
Reginald yielded without further resistance. But he felt fully that to see him, the chaplain of the old College, walking down through Tozer’s garden, between the two rows of closed-up crocuses which glimmered ghostly by the side of the path, was one of the strangest sights in the world.
Phoebe, to tell the truth, was a little confused as to where to convey her captive, out of whom she meant to get a little amusement for the long winter afternoon. For a girl of her active mind, it may easily be imagined that a succession of long days with Mrs. Tozer was somewhat monotonous. She did her duty like a hero, and never complained; but still, if a little amusement was possible, it was worth having. She carried in her two young men as naughty boys carry stag-beetles, or other such small deer. If they would fight it would be fun; and if they would not fight, why, it might be fun still, and more amusing than grandmamma. She hesitated between the chilly drawing-room, where a fire was lighted, but where there was no evidence of human living, and the cozy parlour, where Mrs. Tozer sat in her best cap, still wheezy, but convalescent, waiting for her tea, and not indisposed to receive such deputations of the community as might come to ask for her. Finally, Phoebe opened the door of that sanctuary, which was dazzling with bright firelight after the gloom outside. It was a very comfortable interior, arranged by Phoebe to suit her own ideas rather than those of grandmamma, though grandmamma’s comfort had been her chief object. The tea-things were sparkling upon the table, the kettle singing by the fire, and Mrs. Tozer half-dozing in the tranquillity and warmth.
“Grandmamma, I have brought Mr. May and Mr. Northcote to see you,” she said.
The poor old lady almost sprang from her chair in amazement.
“Lord bless us, Phoebe, Mr. May!”
“Don’t disturb yourself, grandmamma; they will find seats. Yes, we were all looking at the sunset, and as I knew tea must be ready—I know you want it, dear granny—I asked them to have some. Here it is, as I told you, quite hot, and very fragrant this cold night. How cold it is outside! I think it will freeze, and that skating may come off at last, Mr. May, that you were talking of, you remember? You were to teach your sisters to skate.”
“Yes, with the advantage of your example.”
Reginald had put himself in a corner, as far away as possible from the old woman in the chair. His voice, he felt, had caught a formal tone. As for the other, his antagonist, he had assumed the front of the battle—even, in Tozer’s absence, he had ventured to assume the front of the fire. He was not the sort of man Reginald had expected, almost hoped to see—a fleshy man, loosely put together, according to the nature, so far as he knew it, of Dissenters; but a firmly knit, clean-limbed young man, with crisp hair curling about his head, and a gleam of energy and spirit in his eye. The gentler Anglican felt by no means sure of a speedy victory, even of an intellectual kind. The young man before him did not look a slight antagonist. They glared at each other, measuring their strength; they did not know, indeed, that they had been brought in here to this warmth and light, like the stag-beetles, to make a little amusement for Phoebe; but they were quite ready to fight all the same.
“Mr. Northcote, sir, I’m glad to see you. Now this is friendly; this is what I calls as it should be, when a young pastor comes in and makes free, without waiting for an invitation,” said Tozer kindly, bustling in; “that speech of yours, sir, was a rouser; that ’it ’em off, that did, and you can see as the connection ain’t ungrateful. What’s that you say, Phoebe? what? I’m a little hard of hearing. Mr.—May!”
“Mr. May was good enough to come in with me, grandpapa. We met at the door. We have mutual friends, and you know how kind Miss May has been,” said Phoebe, trembling with sudden fright, while Reginald, pale with rage and embarrassment, stood up in his corner. Tozer was embarrassed too. He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands, with a terrible inclination to raise one of them to his forehead. It was all that he could do to get over this class instinct. Young May, though he had been delighted to hear him assailed in the Meeting, was a totally different visitor from the clever young pastor whom he received with a certain consciousness of patronage. Tozer did not know that the Northcotes were infinitely richer, and quite as wellborn and well-bred in their ways as the Mays, and that his young Dissenting brother was a more costly production, as well as a more wealthy man, than the young chaplain in his long
