She shook the room on its legs a little, to show her scorn for such a mere possibility, and retired to the basement. “I must look after them chops for his supper,” she reflected.

Andy walked down the drive towards the village with the feeling that Mrs. Jebb was eye-cornering him from each of the little windows, and with the consciousness that his sky-blue necktie was the only cloud upon his youthful prosperity.

It was a sunny day in March, and as he passed up the village street one or two people, who looked as if they belonged to him in some way, touched their hats or courtesied. One indulgent old gentleman stopped to discuss the weather, and seemed quite interested in his opinions on the subject. Andy felt a little glow of pleasing self-importance, and walked on more briskly in search of that parochial call which the lady in question had doubtless exaggerated into something of a mission.

This lady proved to be Miss Caroline Thorpe, the old churchwarden’s wife, who resided in the quaintest cottage in Gaythorpe, and usually reserved her opinions upon the clergyman until she had seen him. She called herself High Church in a general way, though she listened to dissenters and subscribed to the Wesleyans with a fine open-minded tolerance. Yet the worst sin in the calendar of her own village seemed to be a concession to worldly amusement. She frequently remarked that she did not have a “tea-party” at her residence for anybody.

Andy mounted the little flight of brick steps to the porch, and knocked at the trellised door. A minute later a neat servant ushered him into a tiny sitting-room with chintz-covered furniture and an air of extreme refinement and cleanliness. Miss Thorpe was there, a thin, elegant old lady in black, who bobbed to him with a curtsey, and then laughed as he held out his hand. “Oh, Mr. Guthrie, what would the Bishop say?”

Andy laughed too. “I'm not so much afraid of the Bishop,” he said. “Are you going to patronise me, Miss Thorpe?”

“Dear me, no,” she replied. “But really, you know, I wish they’d send us a married man.”

Andy glanced at the walls where several unframed water-colours testified to the lady’s artistic taste. “The Vicarage is very dull,” she went on. “It should be brightened up for a young man. No books just now, I suppose?”

Sorry to plead guilty to so serious an offence, Andy assured her that his library was on the railway.

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