The same thing happened at the Rectory: even the rector himself came out, wandering, by way of excusing himself for the idleness, about the flowerbeds. ‘The bedding-out plants have done very well this year,’ he said; but he was not thinking of the bedding-out plants any more than the young men were thinking of their cigars. In their minds there was that same sense of the one bit of cake remaining to eat which was in Anne’s song. Charley, who had not the cake, but was only to stand by and assist while his friend ate it, was sympathetically excited, yet felt a little forlorn satisfaction in the approaching resumption of the _pain noir_. He was never to get anything better, it appeared; but it would be pleasanter fare when the munching of the _gâteau_ was over. And Douglas stole off to consume that last morsel when the curate, reluctantly, out of the sweetness of the morning, went off to his schools. Under the Beeches the day was like a fresh bit out of Paradise. If Adam and Eve are only a fable, as the scientific gentlemen say, what a poet Moses was! Eden has never gone out of fashion to this day. The two under the trees, but for her muslin and his tweed, were, over again, the primæval pair--and perhaps the serpent was about too: but neither Eve had seen it, nor Adam prepared that everlasting plea of self-defence which has been handed down through all his sons. This was how the charmed hours stole on, and the perfection of summer passed through the perfection of noon; so many perfections touching each other! a perfect orb of loveliness and happiness, with that added grace which makes perfection more perfect, the sense of incompleteness--the human crown of hope. All the time they were thinking of the something better, something sweeter, that was to come. ‘Will there ever be such another perfect day?’ she said, in a wonder at the new discovered bliss with which she was surrounded. ‘Yes, the next,’ he said, ‘on which we shall not have to part.’ To be sure: there was the parting; without that conclusion, perhaps, this hour would not have been so exquisite: but it was still some hours off, thank heaven!