Who
could say what exquisite and intimate paragraphs did not await a more
leisurely perusal? Really, thought Guy, he might almost suppose himself
in love with the family, so much did the vision of them in that shadowy
drawing-room haunt his memory. Indeed, they were become a picture that
positively ached in his mind with longing for the moment of its
repetition. For some days he spent all his time in the orchard, throwing
sticks for his new bobtail; denying himself with an absurd
self-consciousness the pleasure of walking so far along the mill-stream
even as the bank opposite to the Rectory paddock; denying himself a
fortuitous meeting with any of the family in Wychford High Street; and
on Sunday denying himself the pleasure of seeing them in church,
because he felt it might appear an excuse to be noticed. The vision of
the Rectory obsessed him, but so elusively that when in verse he tried
to state the emotion merely for his own satisfaction, he failed, and he
took refuge from his disappointment by nearly always being late for
meals. Often he would see Miss Peasey walking about the orchard with
desolate tinkle of a Swiss sheep-bell, the only instrument of summons
that the house possessed. Miss Peasey herself looked not unlike a
battered old bellwether as she wandered searching for him in the wind;
and Guy used to watch her from behind a tree-trunk, laughing to himself
until Bob the dog trotted from one to another, describing anxious
circles round their separation.

"Your dinner's been waiting ten minutes, Mr. Hazlewood!"

"Doesn't matter," Guy would shout.

"Mutton to-day," Miss Peasey would say, and, "a little variety," she
always added.

Miss Peasey's religion was variety, and her tragedy was an invention
that never kept pace with aspiration. For three weeks Guy had been given
on Sunday roast beef which lasted till Wednesday; while on Thursday he
was given roast mutton, which as a depressing cold bone always went out
from the dining-room on Saturday night. Every morning he was asked what
he would like for dinner, to which he always replied that he left it to
her. Once, indeed, in a fertile moment he had suggested a curry, and
Miss Peasey, brightening wonderfully, had chirped:

"Ah yes, a little variety."

But in the evening the taste of hot tin that represented Miss Peasey's
curry made him for ever afterwards leave the variety to her own fancy,
thereby preserving henceforth that immutable alternation of roast