Thus, in my second summer at Witching Hill, the Vicarage was
practically rebuilt out of the pockets of parishioners; and we had no
difficulty in providing a furnished substitute on the favourite woodland
side of Mulcaster Park.

Great was the jealousy in Witching Hill Road, but futile the fluttering
of our Queen Anne dovecots; for we saw very little more of the Vicar for
having him in our midst. He was always either immured in his study, or
else hurrying to or from some service or parochial engagement; and
although he had a delightful roadside manner, and the same fine smile
for high and low, he would stop to speak to neither on his way. Out of
church, in fact, Mr. Brabazon preserved a wise aloofness which only
served to emphasise the fierce intimacy of his pulpit utterances, and
combined with his contempt of popularity to render him by far the most
popular figure in the neighbourhood.

It goes without saying that this remarkable man was a High Churchman
and a celibate. His house was kept, and his social short-comings made
good, by two Misses Brabazon, each as unlike him as possible in her own
way. Miss Ruth, who was younger, added to her brother's energy a
sympathetic charm and a really good voice which made her the darling of
the Parish Hall and humbler edifices. Miss Julia's activities were more
sedentary and domestic, as perhaps became the least juvenile of the
trio, and so it was that I saw most of her. We had a whole day together
over the inventory, and it was Miss Julia who interviewed me about
everything else connected with the house. She was never short with me on
those occasions, never ungracious or (what is worse) unduly gracious,
but she had always a pleasant word, and nearly always an innocent little
joke as well. Innocence and jocosity were two of her leading
characteristics; another was a genuine but ingenuous literary faculty.
This she exercised in editing the _Parish Magazine_, and supplying it
with moral serials which occasionally reached volume form under the
auspices of the Religious Tract Society.

On an evening late in April, when the cuckoo was wound up in the wood
behind Mulcaster Park, and most of the beds in front were flowering for
the first time, a gaunt figure came to the gate of the temporary
vicarage and beckoned to me passing on the other side of the road. It
was Miss Julia, and I found her looking gently humorous and knowing
across the gate.

"The trees are coming out so beautifully