rather hurt, 'I kept Henry waiting a long time. I had to
think it all over. I wasn't by any means sure I wanted to marry him.' I
quoted a saying of an old friend of mine who when he was asked why he
had proposed to a girl he had only known three days, said, 'I don't
know! I liked her, and thought I should like to see more of her!'"

"I think I must make out a list of possible candidates," said Howard,
smiling. "I dare say your Jane would help me. I could mark them for
various qualities; we believe in marks at Cambridge. But I must have
time to get used to all my new gifts."

"Oh, one doesn't take long to get used to happiness," said Mrs. Graves.
"It always seems the most natural thing in the world. Tennyson was all
wrong about sorrow. Sorrow is always the casual mistress, and not the
wife. One recovers from everything but happiness; that is one's native
air."

IX

THE VICAR

The Vicarage was a pleasant house, with an air of comfort and moderate
wealth about it. It was part of Frank Sandys' sense, thought Howard,
that he was content to live so simple and retired a life. He did not
often absent himself, even for a holiday. Howard was shown into the
study which Mr. Sandys had improved and enlarged. It was a big room,
with an immense, perfectly plain deal table in the middle, stained a
dark brown; and the Vicar showed Howard with high glee how each of the
four sides of the table was consecrated to a different avocation. "My
accounts end!" he said, "my sermon side! my correspondence end! my
genealogical side!" There were a number of small dodges, desks for
holding books, flaps which could be let up and down, slits in the table
through which papers could be dropped into drawers, a cord by which the
bell could be rung without rising from his place, a cord by which the
door could be bolted. "Not very satisfactory, that last," said the
Vicar, "but I am on the track of an improvement. The worst of it is,"
said the good man, "that I have so little time. I make extracts from
the books I read for my sermons, I cut out telling anecdotes from the
papers. I like to raise questions every now and then in the Guardian,
and that lets me in for a lot of correspondence. I even, I must
confess, sometimes address questions to important people about their
public utterances, and I have an interesting volume of replies, mostly
from secretaries. Then I am always at work on my Somersetshire
genealogies, and that means a mass of letter