"Come in, Johnny! Is it not a lovely day? Herbert thinks it the coldest morning we have had; but I tell him that is because he does not feel very well. And he has been put out a little." "What about?" I asked, as the Rector turned in his chair to shake hands with me. For she had said all that in his hearing. "Oh, there are one or two things. Sam Mullett----" "Where's the use of talking of the stupid old man, Grace?" cried the parson, crossly. "He is getting too old for his place." "And Mr. Sale is going to leave," added Mrs. Tanerton, as I sat down by the table, after delivering the invitation. "The appointment he expected has been offered to him; it is a chaplaincy at the Bahama Islands. Mr. Sale has known of it for a week, and never told Herbert until yesterday." "He spoke to me in the vestry after morning service," said the Rector, in an injured tone. "And he said at the same time that he was not sure he should accept it; it did not quite depend upon himself. I saw as clearly what he meant to imply as though he had avowed it; that it depended upon that girl, Margaret Rymer. It is a preposterous thing. The idea of a clergyman and a gentleman wanting to marry _her_! She keeps a chemist's shop!" "It was her father who kept it," I said eagerly, for I liked Margaret Rymer, and did not care to hear her disparaged. "And he was a gentleman born." "What has that to do with it?" retorted the parson, who was in one of his most touchy humours. "Had her grandfather been a duke, it would make no difference to what she is. Look at the mother!" "Margaret is a lady in mind, in looks, and in manners," I persisted. "If I loved Margaret Rymer, I would marry her, though I were an archdeacon." "That's just like you, Johnny Ludlow! you have no more sense than a child in some things," said the parson, crustily. Grace glanced up from her work and laughed; and looked as if she would like to take part with me. "I never could have suspected Sale of such folly," went on the Rector, warming his hands over the blaze. "Grace, do you think that soup's ready?" "I will see," answered Grace, putting the wristband on the little work-table; and she touched my shoulder playfully in passing. Herbert Tanerton sat in silence; knitting his brow into lines. I took the chair on the other side the fireplace opposite to him, thinking of this and that, and fingering the tongs to help me: a habit I was often scolded for at home--that of fingering things. "Look here, Mr. Tanerton. If they go all the way out to settle at the Bahamas, it will not signify there who Margaret has been here. Whether she may have helped in her father's business, or whether she may have been--as you said--a duke's granddaughter, and brought up accordingly, it will be all one to the Bahamas. Mr. Sale need not say to the Bahamas, 'My wife used to sell pennyworths of rhubarb and magnesia.'"