“She doesn’t look worse.  She looks better.”

“All right.  She won’t deceive me.”

She did look better, better than he could have believed.  There was a faint opaline dawn of color in her face.

Heaven only knew what he talked about, but he talked; for over a quarter of an hour he kept it up.

And when he rose to go he said, “You’re not worse.  You’re better.  You’ll be perfectly well if you’ll only get up and go out.  Why waste all this glorious air?”

“If I could live on air!” said Alice.

“You can—­you do to a very large extent.  You certainly can’t live without it.”

Downstairs he lingered.  But he refused the tea that Gwenda offered him.  He said he hadn’t time.  Patients were waiting for him.

“But I’ll look in next Wednesday, if I may.”

“At teatime?”

“Very well—­at teatime.”

* * * * *

“How’s Alice?” said the Vicar when he returned from Upthorne.

“She’s better.”

“Has that fellow Rowcliffe been here again?”

“He called—­on you, I think.”

(Rowcliffe’s cards lay on the table flap in the passage, proving plainly that his visit was not professional.)

“And you made him see her?” he insisted.

“He saw her.”

“Well?”

“He says she’s all right.  She’ll be well if only she’ll go out in the open air.”

“It’s what I’ve been dinning into her for the last three months.  She doesn’t want a doctor to tell her that.”

He drew her into the study and closed the door.  He was not angry.  He had more than ever his air of wisdom and of patience.

“Look here, Gwenda,” he said gravely.  “I know what I’m doing.  There’s nothing in the world the matter with her.  But she’ll never be well as long as you keep on sending for young Rowcliffe.”

But his daughter Gwendolen was not impressed.  She knew what it meant—­that air of wisdom and of patience.

Her unsubmissive silence roused his temper.

“I won’t have him sent for—­do you hear?”

And he made up his mind that he would go over to Morfe again and give young Rowcliffe a hint.  It was to give him a hint that he had called on Monday.

* * * * *

But the Vicar did not call again in Morfe.  For before he could brace himself to the effort Alice was well again.

Though the Vicar did not know it, Rowcliffe had looked in at teatime the next Wednesday and the next after that.

Alice was no longer compelled to be ill in order to see him.

XIX

  “’Oh Gawd, our halp in a-ages paasst,
  Our ’awp in yeears ter coom,
  Our shal-ter from ther storm-ee blaasst,
  And our ee-tarnal ‘oam!’”

“’Ark at ‘im!  That’s Jimmy arl over.  T’ think that ’is poor feyther’s not in ‘is graave aboove a moonth, an’ ‘e singin’ fit t’ eave barn roof off!  They should tak’ an’ shoot ‘im oop in t’ owd powder magazine,” said Mrs. Gale.