Mrs. Gould declared she could estimate to a fraction the prosperity of Protestantism in the parish by the bows these ladies exchanged with Mrs. Barton when their carriages crossed on the roads.

‘Here are the saffron buns at last, my dear children;’ and Mrs. Barton pressed them upon her girls, saying that Milord had brought them from Dungory Castle especially for them.  ’Take a bottom piece, Olive, and Alice, you really must. . .  Well, if you won’t eat, tell Milord about your play of King Cophetua and the beggar-maid.  Arthur, tell me, how did you like the play, and how did the nuns like it?  To think of my daughter, so prim and demure, writing a play, and on such a subject.’

’But, mamma, what is there odd in the subject?  We all know the old ballad.’

‘Yes, we all know the ballad,’ Arthur answered; ’I sing stanzas of it to the guitar myself.’  He began to chant to himself, and Mrs. Barton listened, her face slanted in the pose of the picture of Lady Hamilton; and Milord rejoiced in the interlude, for it gave him opportunity to meditate.  Anna (Mrs. Barton) seemed to him more charming and attractive than he had ever seen her, as she sat in the quiet shadow of the verandah:  beyond the verandah, behind her, the autumn sunshine fell across the shelving meadows.  A quiet harmony reigned over Brookfield.  The rooks came flapping home through the sunlight, and when Arthur had ceased humming Mrs. Barton said: 

’And now, my dear children, if you have finished your tea, come, and I will show you your room.’

She did not leave the verandah, however, without paying a pretty compliment to Milord, one that set him thinking how miserable his life would have been with his three disagreeable daughters if he had not fallen in with this enchantment.  He remembered that it had lasted for nearly twenty years, and it was as potent as ever.  In what did it consist, he asked himself.  He sometimes thought her laughter too abundant, sometimes it verged on merriment.  He did not like to think of Anna as a merry woman; he preferred to think that wherever she went she brought happiness with her.  He had known her sad, but never melancholy, for she was never without a smile even when she was melancholy.

Awakening from his reverie he drew his chair closer to Arthur’s, and, with a certain parade of interest, asked him if he had been to the Academy.

’Did you see anything, Arthur, that in design approached your picture of Julius Caesar Overturning the Altars of the Druids?’

‘There were some beautiful bits of painting there,’ replied Arthur, whose modesty forbade him to answer the question directly.  ’I saw some lovely landscapes, and there were some babies’ frocks,’ he added satirically.  ’In one of these pictures I saw a rattle painted to perfection.’

’Ah, yes, yes!  You don’t like the pettiness of family feeling dragged into art; but if you only condescend to take a little more notice of the craft—­the craft is, after all—­’