“Ha!  Herbert! is that you?” laughed Julius.

“I beg your pardon!” he breathlessly exclaimed.  “I was just taking the short cut!  I had no idea—­Here, Mungo, you ruffian!” as the Skye was investigating Lady Rosamond’s boot.

“Oh, I like him of all things!  I am glad to welcome you to our future house!” as she held out her hand to the Reverend Herbert Bowater, the junior curate, a deacon of a fortnight’s standing, whose round open happy blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, merry lips, and curly light hair, did not seem in keeping with the rigidly straight collar and waistcoat, and the long black coat, at present plentifully streaked with green tree-moss, while his boots and trousers looked as if they had partaken of the mud-bath which his dogs had evidently been wallowing in.

“Off! off!” were his words, as he shook hands with his rectoress.  “Get away, Rollo!” with an energetic shove of the foot to the big dog, who was about to shake his dripping coat for the ladies’ special benefit.  “I saw you arrive last evening,” he said, in the conversational tone of a gentlemanly school-boy; “didn’t you find it very cold?”

“Not very.  I did not see you, though.”

“He was organizing the cheers,” said Mr. Bindon.  “You shone in that, Bowater.  They kept such good time.”

“You were very good to cheer us at all,” said Julius, “coming in the wake of the Squire as we did.”

“The best of it was,” said the junior, “that Charlie was so awfully afraid that he and poor Miles’s wife would be taken for the Squire, that he dashed in on his way to warn me to choke them off.  If she hadn’t been ill, I must have set the boys on for a lark!  How is she, though?” he asked in a really kind tone.

“She looks very ill, poor thing,” said Julius.

Here the bull terrier became assiduous in his attentions to Rosamond; and between his master’s calls and apologies, and her caresses and excuses, not much more was heard, till Julius asked with mock gravity, “And are these all you’ve brought over, Herbert?”

“Yes, all; I’d half a mind to bring the two greyhounds, but my father thought they would get into trouble in the preserves, and there isn’t room at Mrs. Hornblower’s place,” he answered, with apologetic simplicity.

“What a pity Durham has been reduced!” said Mr. Bindon, dryly.  “It would have been the right preferment for Bowater.  The Bishop was obliged by statute to keep a pack of hounds.”

“But, sir,” expostulated the deacon, turning to the Rector, colouring all over his honest rosy face, “you don’t object!  You know, of course, I’ve given up sport,” he added ruefully; “but only just as companions!—­Ain’t you, Rollo?” he added, almost with tears in his eyes, and a hand on the smooth black head, belonging to such a wise benignant face, that Rosamond was tempted to pronounce the dog the more clerical looking of the two.

“You are very welcome,” said Julius, laughing, “provided you can manage with the old women’s cats.  I should find such companions rather awkward in pastoral visits.”