“I believe I am going to like her,” she said. “I’m a misfit in Moresby myself.”

John Musgrave turned to regard her with a protracted, contemplative look. She met his serious eyes, and smiled mockingly. Though she liked this old friend of her husband very well, his pedantry often worried her; it was, however, she realised, a part of the man’s nature, and not an affectation, which would have made it offensive.

“You are not a misfit in the sense in which she will be,” he replied quietly.

“You are rousing my curiosity to a tremendous pitch,” she returned. “How is it no one here has seen these people? They didn’t take the Hall without viewing it, I suppose?”

“They took it on Charlie’s recommendation, I believe,” he answered. “They will use it merely as a country house.”

“Oh!” Mrs Errol’s tone was slightly disappointed. “That means, I suppose, that they will live mostly in town?”

“And abroad,” he answered. “They travel a lot.”

“Well,” observed Mrs Errol brightly, “they will probably do something when they are here to liven the parish a little. We want a few modern ideas; our ideas in Moresby are covered with lichen. Lichen is picturesque, but it’s a form of decay, after all.”

John Musgrave appeared surprised. Here was another person who hungered for change; it was possibly, he decided, a feminine characteristic.

“Moresby compares, I believe, very favourably with other small places,” he said.

“I daresay it does.” She laughed abruptly. “If it didn’t it might be more gay.”

The vicar smiled at her indulgently.

“I’ve a rebel, you see, John, in my own household. Mary only requires a kindred spirit to break into open revolt. The coming of Mrs Chadwick may create an upheaval.”

“I doubt whether the advent of Mrs Chadwick will work any great change,” John Musgrave returned in his heavy, serious fashion. “We are too settled to have the current of our ideas disturbed by a fresh arrival. She will adapt herself, possibly, to our ways.”

Mrs Errol rose with a little shrug of the shoulders, and left the room. Had John Musgrave, she wondered, ever treated any subject other than seriously? In anyone else this habit of 

 Prev. P 10/159 next