e month was
therefore May, and, at either end of the long, low room in which Mr.
Woodgate sat at work, the windows were filled with a flutter of summer
curtains against a brilliant background of waving greenery. But a fire
burned in one of the two fireplaces in the old-fashioned funnel of a
room, for a treacherous east wind skimmed the sunlit earth outside, and
whistled and sang through one window as the birds did through the other.

Mr. Woodgate was a tall, broad-shouldered, mild-eyed man, with a blot of
whisker under each ear, and the cleanest of clerical collars
encompassing his throat. It was a kindly face that pored over the
unpretentious periods, as they grew by degrees upon the blue-lined
paper, in the peculiar but not uncommon hand which is the hall-mark of
a certain sort of education upon a certain order of mind. The present
specimen was perhaps more methodical than most; therein it was
characteristic of the man. From May to September, Mr. Woodgate never
failed to finish his sermon on the Friday, that on the Saturday he might
be free to play cricket with his men and lads. He was a poor preacher
and no cricketer at all; but in both branches he did his best, with the
simple zeal and the unconscious sincerity which redeemed not a few of
his deficiencies.

So intent was the vicar upon his task, so engrossed in the expression of
that which had already been expressed many a million times, that he did
not hear wheels in his drive, on the side where the wind sang loudest;
he heard nothing until the door opened, and a girl in her twenties,
trim, slim, and brown with health, came hurriedly in.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, dear, but who do you think is here?"

Hugh Woodgate turned round in his chair, and his honest ox-eyes filled
with open admiration of the wife who was so many years younger than
himself, and who had seen in him Heaven knew what! He never could look
at her without that look first; and only now, after some years of
marriage, was he beginning sometimes to do so without this thought
next. But he had not the gift of expression, even in the perpetual
matter of his devotion; and perhaps its perpetuity owed something to
that very want; at least there was none of the verbal evaporation which
comes of too much lovers' talk.

"Who is it?" he asked.

"Mrs. Venables!"

Woodgate groaned. Was he obliged to appear? His jaw fell, and his wife's
eyes sparkled.

"Dear, I wouldn't even have let you know she was her