The vicar smiled openly now.

“People do marry for love occasionally,” he remarked.

“Do they?... Do they indeed?”

John Musgrave was gazing into the fire again, his expression doubtful, faintly discomfited—almost, it seemed to the man watching him in puzzled amusement, shocked.

“Dear me!” he ejaculated softly, and seemed disquieted at the presentment of this extraordinary idea. “Dear me!” he repeated slowly.

The vicar broke into a hearty laugh.

“Oh, Coelebs, my dear old Coelebs,” he said; “it was not without a sufficient reason you gained that nickname at Oxford. What have you been doing, to live in the world so long and never to have learned the biggest and simplest of life’s lessons? From the bottom of my heart I wish it may yet fall to your lot to get some practical experience. Find some one to fill Belle’s place in your home, dear old fellow, and then you will miss her no longer.”

“I wish, Walter,” John Musgrave said, frowning heavily, “that you were given to a greater seriousness in your conversation.”

“I wish, John,” the other retorted amiably, “that you were inclined towards a lesser seriousness. As for me, I was never more in earnest in my life. Fill Belle’s place, and then you will be relieved of the necessity for engaging such a sour-faced person as opened your front door to me yesterday.”

“You mean Eliza?” said John Musgrave, surprised. “She is a most respectable woman.”

“Guaranteed respectability has no need to be so disagreeably assertive of its claim to recognition,” the vicar returned, unmoved. “The lack of amiability in one’s expression suggests an unamiable disposition. A cheerful heart is the supremest of virtues.”

He rose to his feet in response to the agreeable summons of the supper-gong, and placed a hand affectionately on John Musgrave’s shoulder.

“Adam was the first man to take a bite out of an apple,” he said, “but since he created the precedent for eating the fruit, men have developed the taste for apples.”

“For a clergyman, Walter,” his friend returned disapprovingly, “your conversation is at times highly irreverent.”

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