“Yes—­that is, it might have been Mr. Angleside—­Lord Scatterbeigh’s son—­he was here, too.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Goddard, “perhaps it was.”

“Mamma,” asked little Nellie, “what is Laws Catterbay?”

“A peer, darling.”

“Like the one at Brighton, mamma, with a band?”

“No, child,” answered the mother laughing.  “P, double E, R, peer—­a rich gentleman.”

“Like poor papa then?” inquired the irrepressible Eleanor.

Mrs. Goddard turned pale and pressed the little girl close to her side, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

“You must not ask foolish questions, darling—­I will tell you by and by.”

“Papa was a rich gentleman,” objected the child.

Mrs. Goddard looked at Mrs. Ambrose, and the ready tears came into her eyes.  The vicar’s wife smiled kindly and took little Nellie by the hand.

“Come, dear,” she said in the motherly tone that was natural to her when she was not receiving visitors.  “Come and see the garden and you can play with Carlo.”

“Can’t I see Laws Catterbay, too?” asked the little girl rather wistfully.

“Carlo is a great, big, brown dog,” said Mrs. Ambrose, leading the child out into the garden, while Mrs. Goddard followed close behind.  Before they had gone far they came upon the vicar, arrayed in an old coat, his hands thrust into a pair of gigantic gardening gloves and a battered old felt hat upon his head.  Mrs. Goddard had felt rather uncomfortable in the impressive society of Mrs. Ambrose and the sight of the vicar’s genial face was reassuring in the extreme.  She was not disappointed, for he immediately relieved the situation by asking all manner of kindly questions, interspersed with remarks upon his garden, while Mrs. Ambrose introduced little Nellie to the acquaintance of Carlo who had not seen so pretty a little girl for many a day, and capered and wagged his feathery tail in a manner most unseemly for so clerical a dog.

So it came about that Mrs. Goddard established herself at Billingsfield and made her first visit to the vicarage.  After that the ice was broken and things went on smoothly enough.  Mrs. Ambrose’s hints concerning foreign blood, and her husband’s invariable remonstrance to the effect that she ought to be more charitable, grew more and more rare as time went on, and finally ceased altogether.  Mrs. Goddard became a regular institution, and ceased to astonish the inhabitants.  Mr. Thomas Reid, the sexton, was heard to remark from time to time that he “didn’t hold with th’m newfangle fashins in dress;” but he was a regular old conservative, and most people agreed with Mr. Abraham Boosey of the Duke’s Head, who had often been to London, and who said she did “look just A one, slap up, she did!”