The clock struck eight as the congregation came trooping out of the church, with much greeting of neighbours in the darkness just outside the old stone porch. Mrs. Dulcimer seized upon the two girls, as they were going away, with a sober-looking man-servant, in a dark livery, in attendance on the heiress. ‘You are not going home, Trix,’ cried the Vicar’s wife. ‘You and Bella must come to the Vicarage to supper. It’s an age since I’ve seen you.’ ‘Dear Mrs. Dulcimer, I spent the day with you only last Tuesday! I am quite ashamed of coming so often!’ ‘You foolish child, you know it is my delight to have you. And Bella must come to-night. I insist on Bella’s coming too.’ This was said with unconscious condescension. It was, of course, a grand thing for Miss Scratchell to be asked to supper at the Vicarage. ‘Papa expects me to go straight home,’ said Beatrix, evidently anxious to accept the invitation. ‘My love, you know your papa never expects anything from you. You are quite your own mistress. Parker,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, wheeling suddenly and addressing herself to the footman, ‘you will be good enough to tell your master, with my compliments, that I am taking Miss Harefield to the Vicarage for supper, and that you are to come for her at ten o’clock. You understand, Parker, at ten; and you can take a glass of ale in the Vicarage kitchen while Miss Harefield puts on her bonnet.’ Mrs. Dulcimer always went into details, and overflowed in small acts of good nature to the inferior classes. CHAPTER IV. ‘DOWER’D WITH OUR CURSE, AND STRANGER’D WITH OUR OATH.’ THERE was no pleasanter house in Little Yafford or its neighbourhood to visit on a Sunday evening than the shabby old Vicarage, in which Mr. and Mrs. Dulcimer had lived happily for the last twenty years. It was an old house--and had never been a grand house even in its best days; indeed, there was a legend in Little Yafford that it had once belonged to a farm, and there was a certain homely substantiality and solidity about it which favoured that idea. Severe critics declared that there was not a single good room in the house, and it must be admitted that all the rooms were low, and that the chimneys projected into them in a way which modern architecture disallows, leaving a deep recess on each side to be filled up with books, old china or such miscellaneous goods as Mrs. Piper, of the Park, denounced comprehensively as rubbish. The windows were casements, with leaden lattices, and admitted as little light as was consistent with their obvious functions. Heavy beams supported the low ceilings, big old grates devoured incalculable quantities of fuel, but happily coals--pronounced for the most part as a dissyllable--co-als--were cheap at Little Yafford.