“I don’t feel cold,” said Priscilla, smiling at this vision of benevolence.

“But I do think you ought not to linger here,” said the vicar.

“I am waiting for my uncle.  He’s gone to buy a cottage, and ought to be back, really, by now.”

“Buy a cottage?” repeated the vicar.  “My dear young lady, you say that in the same voice you might use to tell me your uncle had gone to buy a bun.”

“What is a bun?” asked Priscilla.

“A bun?” repeated the vicar bewildered, for nobody had ever asked him that before.

“Oh I know—­” said Priscilla quickly, faintly flushing, “it’s a thing you eat.  Is there a special voice for buns?”

“There is for a thing so—­well, so momentous as the buying of a cottage.”

“Is it momentous?  It seems to me so nice and natural.”

She looked up at the vicar and his son, calmly scrutinizing first one and then the other, and they stood looking down at her; and each time her eyes rested on Robin they found his staring at her with the frankest expression of surprise and admiration.

“Pardon me,” said the vicar, “if I seem inquisitive, but is it one of the Symford cottages your uncle wishes to buy?  I did not know any were for sale.”

“It’s that one by the gate,” said Priscilla, slightly turning her head in its direction.

“Is it for sale?  Dear me, I never knew Lady Shuttleworth sell a cottage yet.”

“I don’t know yet if she wants to,” said Priscilla; “but Fr—­, my uncle, will give any price.  And I must have it.  I shall—­I shall be ill if I don’t.”

The vicar gazed at her upturned face in perplexity.  “Dear me,” he said, after a slight pause.

“We must live somewhere,” remarked Priscilla.

“Of course you must,” said Robin, suddenly and so heartily that she examined his eager face in more detail.

“Quite so, quite so,” said the vicar.  “Are you staying here at present?”

“Never at the Cock and Hens?” broke in Robin.

“We’re at Baker’s Farm.”

“Ah yes—­poor Mrs. Pearce will be glad of lodgers.  Poor soul, poor soul.”

“She’s a very dirty soul,” said Robin; and Priscilla’s eyes flashed over him with a sudden sparkle.

“Is she the soul with the holes in its apron?” she asked.

“I expect there are some there.  There generally are,” said Robin.

They both laughed; but the vicar gently shook his head.  “Ah well, poor thing,” he said, “she has an uphill life of it.  They don’t seem able—­they don’t seem to understand the art of making both ends meet.”

“It’s a great art,” said Robin.

“Perhaps they could be helped,” said Priscilla, already arranging in her mind to go and do it.

“They do not belong to the class one can help.  And Lady Shuttleworth, I am afraid, disapproves of shiftless people too much to do anything in the way of reducing the rent.”