“It is so, however,” said Mr. Bell. “He died quite suddenly, when on a visit to me at Oxford. He was a good man, Mrs. Purkis, and there’s many of us that might be thankful to have as calm an end as his. Come, Margaret, my dear! Her father was my oldest friend, and she’s my goddaughter, so I thought we would just come down together and see the old place; and I know of old you can give us comfortable rooms and a capital dinner. You don’t remember me I see, but my name is Bell, and once or twice when the parsonage has been full, I’ve slept here, and tasted your good ale.”
“To be sure; I ask your pardon; but you see I was taken up with Miss Hale. Let me show you to a room, Miss Margaret, where you can take off your bonnet, and wash your face. It’s only this very morning I plunged some fresh-gathered roses head downward in the water-jug, for thought I, perhaps someone will be coming, and there’s nothing so sweet as spring-water scented by a musk rose or two. To think of the Vicar being dead! Well, to be sure, we must all die; only that gentleman said, he was quite picking up after his trouble about Mrs. Hale’s death.”
“Come down to me, Mrs. Purkis, after you have attended to Miss Hale. I want to have a consultation with you about dinner.”
The little casement window in Margaret’s bedchamber was almost filled up with rose and vine branches; but, pushing them aside, and stretching a little out, she could see the tops of the parsonage chimneys above the trees, and distinguish many a well-known line through the leaves.
“Aye!” said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and despatching Jenny for an armful of lavender-scented towels, “times is changed, miss; our new Vicar has seven children, and is building a nursery ready for more, just where the arbour and tool-house used to be in old times. And he has had new grates put in, and a plate-glass window in the drawing-room. He and his wife are stirring people, and have done a deal of good; at least they say it’s doing good; if it were not, I should call it turning things upside down for very little purpose. The new Vicar is a teetotaller, miss, and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of receipts for economical cooking, and is for making bread without yeast; and they both talk so much, and both at a time, that they knock one down as it were, and it’s not till they’re gone, and one’s a little at peace, that one can think that there were things one might have said on one’s own side of the question. He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hayfield, and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because it’s not ginger-beer, but I can’t help it. My mother and my grandmother before me sent good malt liquor to haymakers, and took salts and senna when anything ailed them; and I must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs. Hepworth does want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it. But I must go, miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing; I’ll come back to you before long.”
Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown bread, and a jug of milk (together with a Stilton cheese and a bottle of port for his own private refreshment), ready for Margaret on her coming downstairs; and after this rustic luncheon they set out for a walk, hardly knowing in what direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were there in each.
“Shall we go past the vicarage?” asked Mr. Bell.
“No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round so as to come back by it,” said Margaret.
Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn before; or a squatter’s roughly-built and decaying cottage had disappeared. Margaret missed them each and all, and grieved over them like old friends. They came past the spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched. The white, lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose roots they had sat down was there no more; the old man, the inhabitant of the ruinous cottage, was dead; the cottage had been pulled down, and a new one, tidy and respectable, had been built in its stead. There was a small garden on the place where the beech-tree had been.
“I did not think I had been so old,” said Margaret after a pause of silence; and she turned away sighing.
“Yes!” said Mr. Bell. “It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive.”
“Let us go on to see little Susan,” said Margaret, drawing her companion up a grassy roadway, leading under the shadow of a forest glade.
“With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little Susan may be. But I have a kindness for all Susans, for simple Susan’s sake.”
“My little Susan was disappointed when I left without wishing her goodbye; and it has been on my conscience ever since, that I gave her pain which a little more exertion on my part might have prevented. But it is a long way. Are you sure you will not
