The Rector, when he came home upon that day, when Jim’s alliance with Mr. Osborne began, did not show any such pleasure in the circumstances as his wife expected. He mumbled and coughed, and with a lowering brow said that anything was an excuse that kept the boy from his work, and that if Jim picked up Osborne’s fads in addition to his own faults they would make a pretty hash of it altogether. Mrs. Plowden, however, made the less of this that the Rector was evidently in but an indifferent state of temper and spirits generally. ‘He has been put out about something,’ his interpreter said to the girls; ‘something has gone wrong with him in town; he has not got his business done as he wished.’ But what that business was, his wife was obliged to allow that she did not know. ‘I can’t help thinking,’ she said, ‘that it’s something about your uncle Reginald. What else could Emily have come over in such hot haste about? And then your father going up to town in this wild way without giving any reason. I can’t imagine what can be the cause unless it was something about Reginald. They are dreadful for sticking to each other, the Plowdens; they would think, perhaps, that I would make a remark, and I am sure that there are plenty of remarks I might make, for if ever there was a man who was utterly unbearable in a house it was Reginald Plowden, and nothing in the world would make me consent to have him here again, nothing! Your father has had something on his mind for some time back. Don’t you remember he burst in one day as if he were full of something to tell us, and then stopped short all at once?’ ‘But that looked as if it was good news, mamma. He had met Mr. Swinford and he was just going to tell us.’ ‘What good news could come to us through Leo Swinford?’ cried Mrs. Plowden scornfully: which was to poor Emmy as if somebody had given her a blow in the face. She fell back quite suddenly behind her sister, and attempted no reply. ‘It did look at first as if it was something good,’ Mrs. Plowden allowed; ‘but when I tried to draw it out of him he only got into a fuss you know, as he does so often, and told me I’d hear it all in good time. I am sure ever since he has had something on his mind; and when he came back from town last night he could have torn us all in pieces. If it is not about Reginald I am sure I can’t imagine what it can be.’ ‘It may be something about Aunt Emily, mamma.’ ‘What could there be about Emily? No, she has heard from Reginald, that is what it is, and he has told her he was sending back her money, or something of that sort, and your father has gone up to town to see if it was true. And he has found out, of course, that it was not true, as I could have told him before he went a step on such an errand. And now he can’t contain himself for rage and disappointment, and if I’m not mistaken, he has gone over to tell your aunt Emily that she is not to think of it any more.’