Mrs. Ramshorn, also, was uncomfortable—­too much so to be relieved by taking off her bonnet.  She felt, with no little soreness, that the rector was not with her in her depreciation of Wingfold.  She did her best to play the hostess, but the rector, while enjoying his dinner despite discomfort in the inward parts, was in a mood of silence altogether new both to himself and his companions.  Mrs. Bevis, however, talked away in a soft, continuous murmur.  She was a good-natured, gentle soul, without whose sort the world would be harder for many.  She did not contribute much to its positive enjoyment, but for my part, I can not help being grateful even to a cat that will condescend to purr to me.  But she had not much mollifying influence on her hostess, who snarled, and judged, and condemned, nor seemed to enjoy her dinner the less.  When it was over, the ladies went to the drawing-room; and the rector, finding his company unpleasant, drank but a week-day’s allowance of wine, and went to have a look at his horses.

They neighed a welcome the moment his boot struck the stones of the yard, for they loved their master with all the love their strong, timid, patient hearts were as yet capable of.  Satisfied that they were comfortable, for he found them busy with a large feed of oats and chaff and Indian corn, he threw his arm over the back of his favorite, and stood, leaning against her for minutes, half dreaming, half thinking.  As long as they were busy, their munching and grinding soothed him—­held him at least in quiescent mood; the moment it ceased, he seemed to himself to wake up out of a dream.  In that dream, however, he had been more awake than any hour for long years, and had heard and seen many things.  He patted his mare lovingly, then, with a faint sense of rebuked injustice, went into the horse’s stall, and patted and stroked him as he had never done before.

He went into the inn, and asked for a cup of tea.  He would have had a sleep on Mrs. Pinks’s sofa, as was his custom in his study—­little study, alas, went on there!—­but he had a call to make, and must rouse himself, and that was partly why he had sought the inn.  For Mrs. Ramshorn’s household was so well ordered that nothing was to be had out of the usual routine.  It was like an American country inn, where, if you arrive after supper, you will most likely have to starve till next morning.  Her servants, in fact, were her masters, and she dared not go into her own kitchen for a jug of hot water.  Possibly it was her dethronement in her own house that made her, with a futile clutching after lost respect, so anxious to rule in the abbey church.  As it was, although John Bevis and she had known each other long, and in some poor sense intimately, he would never in her house have dared ask for a cup of tea except it were on the table.  But here was the ease of his inn, where the landlady herself was proud to get him what he wanted.  She made the tea from her own caddy; and when he had drunk three cups of it, washed his red face, and re-tied his white neck-cloth, he set out to make his call.