In the meanwhile, Squire Warrender and Miss Hood pursued the even tenour of their ways at The Warren; frequent letters from his daughter, describing the delights of their foreign tour, cheered the old man. All unconsciously, the squire sent his hares and his pheasants to the vicar's wife, his peaches and his flowers to her sister-in-law. In his cracked old voice, he still paid his Grandisonian compliments to the two ladies. He was somewhat surprised perhaps to notice that Miss Dodd was by degrees abandoning her semi-religious garb; and that his visits to the two ladies invariably procured him the pleasure of _tête-à-tête_ interviews with the spinster. He noticed too that the vicar's sister now shook hands with him with an unwonted pressure. One afternoon he actually came home with a button-hole, a white passion flower, which the trembling fingers of Miss Dodd had placed in his coat. "'Pon my word," he said to Miss Hood, wearing this decoration as they took their habitual cup of tea together, "I really think that Stacey Dodd gets younger every day." Miss Hood pricked up her ears. Was the hale old gentleman going to make a fool of himself after all? Old Mrs. Wurzel and the buxom Miss Grains sat in the little room at the vicarage, which was known to everybody as Mrs. Dodd's own room. The vicar's wife sat before a huge book, in front of her were little piles of copper money. She and her two visitors, and, of course, the vicar _ex-officio_, formed the committee of the village coal club. After much counting and recounting of the coppers, the total was pronounced correct, and the real work for which the ladies had met was over. The window of the room commanded a view of the lovely old-fashioned garden, which had been the care and pride of many successive vicars of King's Warren. The close-shaven lawn had the inevitable sun dial in its centre. The garden was not at its best, for the trees had not yet commenced to bud, but it was a fine clear day, and the trim little figure of the vicar's sister was seen briskly pacing up and down the well-kept walks. "I don't think your sister-in-law seems to care so much for parish work as once she did, Mrs. Dodd," remarked the old lady to the vicar's wife. "No, poor thing, I fear she has anxieties of her own just now, she seeks solitude a good deal." "Is there any attachment, dear Mrs. Dodd?" said Mrs. Wurzel with interest. "Oh, Mrs. Dodd, not an unrequited attachment?" burst forth the brewer's daughter. For that strapping young woman was romantic, and though the course of her own love ran smoothly enough, still she felt a sentimental interest in the woes of others, real or supposed. Her fat red cheeks would quiver with emotion, and be wet with briny tears, over the sorrows of Mr. Trollope's heroines. Fat people are always sentimental, though they may not seem so, and beneath Miss Grains' tightly-laced corset beat a sympathetic heart. "An unrequited attachment," she repeated, "is so very, very sad."