Lucian refused two invitations that afternoon. Mr. Pepperdine offered to take him with him to York, whither he was proceeding on business; Miss Judith asked him if he would like to go with her to the house of a friend in whose grounds was a haunted hermitage. He declined both invitations with great politeness and went out in solitude. Part of the afternoon he spent with an old man who mended the roads. The old man was stone-deaf and needed no conversational effort on the part of a friend, and when he spoke himself he talked of intelligent subjects, such as rheumatism, backache, and the best cure for stone in the bladder. Lucian thought him a highly intelligent man, and presented him with a screw of tobacco purchased at the village shop--it was a tacit thankoffering to the gods that the old man had avoided the subject of girls. His spirits improved after a visit to the shoemaker, who told him a brand-new ghost story for the truth of which he vouched with many solemn asseverations, and he was chatty with his Aunt Keziah when they took tea together. But that night he did not talk so much as usual, and he went to bed early and made no attempt to coax Miss Pepperdine into letting him have the extra light which she had confiscated after he had set his bed on fire. Next day Lucian hoped to find the vicar in a saner frame of mind, but to his astonishment and disgust Mr. Chilverstone immediately began to talk of Sprats again, and continued to do so until he became unbearable. Lucian was obliged to listen to stories which to him seemed inept, fatuous, and even imbecile. He was told of Sprats’s first distinct words; of her first tooth; of her first attempts to walk; of the memorable occasion upon which she placed her pet kitten on the fire in order to warm it. The infatuated father, who had not had an opportunity of retailing these stories for some time, and who believed that he was interesting his listener, continued to pour forth story after story, each more feeble and ridiculous than the last, until Lucian could have shrieked with the agony which was tearing his soul to pieces. He pleaded a bad headache at last and tried to slip away--Mr. Chilverstone detained him in order to give him an anti-headache powder, and accompanied his researches into the medicine cupboard with a highly graphic description of a stomach-ache which Sprats had once contracted from too lavish indulgence in unripe apples, and was cured by himself with some simple drug. The vicar, in short, being a disingenuous and a simple-minded man, had got Sprats on the brain, and he imagined that every word he said was meeting with a responsive thrill in the boy’s heart.