“She’s going to sit through the night with Mrs. Stigard. I shall be surprised if the poor old woman lives till morning; ten to one I shall be sent for. Lucy,” he added, as if a semi-conscious process of reflection had just come to clear issue in his mind, “that parcel for the binder is still lying upstairs. I saw it this morning with amazement; thought it had gone a week ago.” “I’ll see to it, dear,” replied his wife, without looking up from the bread she was cutting. “Pity it has been forgotten.” “Forgotten! And you, who never forget anything!” Then, turning to Kingcote, he declaimed, with humorous gesture and emphasis: “Brother Cosroe, I find myself aggrieved, Yet insufficient to express the same, For it requires a great and thundering speech!” “By-the-bye,” he continued, as he poured out a glass of ale from the foam-capped jug, “it’s beyond all doubt that Grubb is wrong in his calculation. He says, you remember, that the proportion of unstopt lines in the ‘Two Gentlemen’ is one in eleven. Now I make it one in nine decimal fifteen, and I’ve been over it twice with the utmost care. This is a point of considerable importance. Take that chair, Kingcote.” “Thank you,” Kingcote said, “I shall not eat.” “Why not? There’s pippins and cheese to come. Then, at least, as Claudius said to the chickens, drink.” Kingcote declined, in spite of much hospitable pressure, and kept his arm-chair. Mr. Vissian applying himself to his supper, talked in intervals of mastication. “Mrs. Clarendon wishes you to call tomorrow or next day; pray do so. I can’t quite make out that mistake of Grubb’s; he must have calculated from an edition in which the lines are differently arranged. I shall communicate with him. Lucy, my love, I beg of you to see that those books are dispatched the first thing to-morrow; the dilatory scoundrel always keeps me waiting, and there’s a ‘Cursor Mundi’ I want to work at.” Kingcote suddenly rose and stepped to Mrs. Vissian to bid her good night. “Going, what?” exclaimed the rector, turning round, with an end of his napkin in each hand. “But I wanted to ask your opinion about---- You don’t look well, my dear fellow; what is it?” “Nothing, nothing. I’ve tired myself with walking. I’ll get home.” “You have an umbrella? Then you must take one of mine. But, I tell you, you must; it’s raining like a waterspout. Shall I walk with you?” Kingcote had gone off into the darkness with inaudible replies. “What is the matter with him?” asked the rector, standing in surprise. “Is he going to be ill? An awkward look-out in that cottage, with not a soul near.” “He was very strange when he came,” Mrs. Vissian remarked. “He said he’d been walking, and yet wasn’t aware that it had rained.” “Wasn’t aware? Curious fellow, Kingcote.” “Don’t you think, Walter, there’s something about him we don’t understand--something in the circumstances of his life, I mean?”