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“I know what that means,” he said. “He was watching the window, and they have just pulled down the blind. I suppose he must be fond of her and it–affects him. Oh! if I were younger I think this would kill me, but, thank God! as one draws near the end of the road the feet harden; one does not feel the thorns so much. ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, bl–bl–yes, I will say it–blessed be the Name of the Lord.’ I should remember that she is so much better where she is; that this is a very hard world; indeed, sometimes I think it is not a world, but a hell. Oh! Barbara, my sweet Barbara!” and he struggled forward blindly beating at the rough wind with his hands as though it were a visible foe, and so at last came to the crest of the hill where Anthony Arnott lay prone upon his face.

So sure was Septimus of the cause of his collapse that he did not even trouble to look at the Rectory windows in the hollow near the church two hundred yards or so away. He only looked at Anthony, saying:

“Poor lad, poor lad! I wonder how I shall get him home; I must fetch some help.”

As he spoke, Anthony sat up and said, “You see, you see!”

“See what?”

“The blind; it is quite up. When I got here it was half down, then someone pulled it up. That’s what finished me. I felt as though I had been hit on the head with a stick.”

The Reverend Septimus stared, then suddenly sank to his knees and returned thanks in his simple fashion.

“Don’t let us be too certain, Anthony,” he exclaimed at length. “There may be a mistake, or perhaps this is only a respite which will prolong the suspense. Often such things happen to torment us; I mean that they are God’s way of trying and purifying our poor sinful hearts.”

CHAPTER II

THE NEW YEAR FEAST

Barbara did not die. On the contrary, Barbara got quite well again, but her recovery was so slow that Anthony only saw her once before he was obliged to return to college. This was on New Year’s Day, when Mr. Walrond asked him to dinner to meet Barbara, who was coming down for the first time. Needless to say he went, taking with him a large bunch of violets which he had grown in a frame at the Hall especially for Barbara. Indeed, she had already received many of those violets through the agency of her numerous younger sisters.

The Rectory dinner was at one o’clock, and the feast could not be called sumptuous. It consisted of a piece of beef, that known as the “aitch-bone,” which is perhaps the cheapest that the butcher supplies when the amount of eating is taken into consideration; one roast duck, a large Pekin, the Near Year offering of the farmer Stevens; and a plum pudding somewhat pallid in appearance. These dainties with late apples and plenty of cold water made up the best dinner that the Walrond family had eaten for many a day.

The Rectory dining-room was a long, narrow chamber of dilapidated appearance, since between meals it served as a schoolroom also. A deal bookcase in the corner held some tattered educational works and the walls that once had been painted blue, but now were faded in patches to a sickly green, were adorned only with four texts illuminated by Barbara. These texts had evidently served as targets for moistened paper pellets, some of which still stuck upon their surface.

Anthony arrived a little late, since the picking of the violets had taken longer than he anticipated, and as there was no one to open the front door, walked straight into the dining-room. In the doorway he collided with the little maid-of-all-work, a red-elbowed girl of singularly plain appearance, who having deposited the beef upon the table, was rushing back for the duck, accompanied by two of the young Walronds who were assisting with the vegetables. The maid, recoiling, sat down with a bump on one of the wooden chairs, and the Walrond girls, a merry, good-looking, unkempt crew (no boy had put in an appearance in all that family), burst into screams of laughter. Anthony apologised profusely; the maid, ejaculating that she didn’t mind, not she, jumped up and ran for the duck; and the Reverend Septimus, a very different Septimus to him whom we met a month or so before, seizing his hand, shook it warmly, calling out: