nd kept turning
amused, tender glances at his wife as she stood in the uncarpeted space
in the window, with the sunshine pouring in on her eager face. Mrs
Asplin had been married for twenty years, and was the mother of three
big children; but such was the buoyancy of her Irish nature and the
irrepressible cheeriness of her heart, that she was in good truth the
youngest person in the house, so that her own daughters were sometimes
quite shocked at her levity of behaviour, and treated her with gentle,
motherly restraint. She was tall and thin, like her husband, and he, at
least, considered her every whit as beautiful as she had been a score of
years before. Her hair was dark and curly; she had deep-set grey eyes,
and a pretty fresh complexion. When she was well, and rushing about in
her usual breathless fashion, she looked like the sister of her own tall
girls; and when she was ill, and the dark lines showed under her eyes,
she looked like a tired, wearied girl, but never for a moment as if she
deserved such a title as an old, or elderly, woman. Now, as she read,
her eyes glowed, and she uttered ecstatic little exclamations of triumph
from time to time; for Arthur Saville, the son of the lady who was the
writer of the letter, had been the first pupil whom her husband had
taken into his house to coach, and as such had a special claim on her
affection. For the first dozen years of their marriage all had gone
smoothly with Mr and Mrs Asplin, and the vicar had had more work than
he could manage in his busy city parish; then, alas, lung trouble had
threatened; he had been obliged to take a year's rest, and to exchange
his living for a sleepy little parish, where he could breathe fresh air,
and take life at a slower pace. Illness, the doctor's bills, the year's
holiday, ran away with a large sum of money; the stipend of the country
church was by no means generous, and the vicar was lamenting the fact
that he was shortest of money just when his children were growing up and
he needed it most, when an old college friend requested, as a favour,
that he would undertake the education of his only son, for a year at
least, so that the boy might be well grounded in his studies before
going on to the military tutor who was to prepare him for Sandhurst.
Handsome terms were quoted, the vicar looked upon the offer as a leading
of Providence, and Arthur Saville's stay at the vicarage proved a
success in every sense of the word. He was