What rejoicings there were that night at Kestercham Vicarage! Gerald’s little sisters all sat up (except the baby) in honour of his home-coming. Mrs. Eversley’s sternness relaxed under the influence of the genial occasion, she kissed him with unusual warmth, looked him all over, and, while remarking that his clothes would need a good deal of mending, gave it as her opinion that he was ‘very much improved,’ and she ‘had never seen him look so gentleman-like.’ The servants, including the gardener, who was married and lived by the green gate, came in a body to welcome Master Gerald. And tea was hardly finished when the voice of Mr. Seaford was heard in the hall, inquiring if the vicar was within, and if ‘the young gentleman’ had got home safely ‘from that nasty ingin.’ For Mr. Seaford himself made it a rule not to travel by rail; he firmly believed, and did not scruple to express his belief, that the locomotive engine was an invention of the Evil One; and by way of impressing his view upon his domestic circle, which was composed of Mrs. Seaford and an unmarried daughter--the same who played the harmonium in church--all the other members of his family being married and out in the world, he was fond of reading aloud on the winter evenings a detailed account of some terrible railway accident which had lately occurred, enriching it with a stirring commentary of his own, which was not calculated to mitigate its horror. The question addressed by Mr. Seaford to the maidservant in the hall would suggest that he imagined passengers by rail to occupy places on the engine; but, of course, he may have spoken inexactly. At all events, in the eyes of Mr. Seaford, Gerald’s safe return to Kestercham was not only a pleasure, but in some sense a surprise; he looked upon it as an instance of a special Providence. For Mr. Seaford’s own travels seldom extended beyond a drive in his brougham to attend the fortnightly market at Wickeston, or on rare occasions, and always under protest, with Mrs. Seaford to do some necessary shopping at X----. Nothing would satisfy Mr. Eversley on the evening of Gerald’s return but that Mr. Seaford should stay and drink a cup of tea at the vicarage, despite something of the nature of a protest from Mrs. Eversley, whose rigid adherence to the inviolable social distinction between the clerical and the agricultural classes seemed to be threatened with a serious assault. But Mr. Eversley’s enthusiasm was not to be gainsaid. ‘Now, Mr. Seaford,’ he exclaimed, ‘this _is_ good of you. You must let Mrs. Eversley give you a cup of tea; you must indeed.’ ‘My dear!’ interposed Mrs. Eversley, who foresaw an air of ‘commonness’ descending upon the house if a farmer like Mr. Seaford should be known to have taken a seat at her tea-table.