‘Surely, sir, it’s never so!’ said Mrs. Purkis, turning to Mr. Bell for confirmation of the sad suspicion that now entered her mind.  ’There was a gentleman here in the spring—­it might have been as long ago as last winter—­who told us a deal of Mr. Hale and Miss Margaret; and he said Mrs. Hale was gone, poor lady.  But never a word of the Vicar’s being ailing!’

‘It is so, however,’ said Mr. Bell.  ’He died quite suddenly, when on a visit to me at Oxford.  He was a good man, Mrs. Purkis, and there’s many of us that might be thankful to have as calm an end as his.  Come Margaret, my dear!  Her father was my oldest friend, and she’s my god-daughter, so I thought we would just come down together and see the old place; and I know of old you can give us comfortable rooms and a capital dinner.  You don’t remember me I see, but my name is Bell, and once or twice when the parsonage has been full, I’ve slept here, and tasted your good ale.’

’To be sure; I ask your pardon; but you see I was taken up with Miss Hale.  Let me show you to a room, Miss Margaret, where you can take off your bonnet, and wash your face.  It’s only this very morning I plunged some fresh-gathered roses head downward in the water-jug, for, thought I, perhaps some one will be coming, and there’s nothing so sweet as spring-water scented by a musk rose or two.  To think of the Vicar being dead!  Well, to be sure, we must all die; only that gentleman said, he was quite picking up after his trouble about Mrs. Hale’s death.’

’Come down to me, Mrs. Purkis, after you have attended to Miss Hale.  I want to have a consultation with you about dinner.’

The little casement window in Margaret’s bed-chamber was almost filled up with rose and vine branches; but pushing them aside, and stretching a little out, she could see the tops of the parsonage chimneys above the trees; and distinguish many a well-known line through the leaves.

‘Aye!’ said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and despatching Jenny for an armful of lavender-scented towels, ’times is changed, miss; our new Vicar has seven children, and is building a nursery ready for more, just out where the arbour and tool-house used to be in old times.  And he has had new grates put in, and a plate-glass window in the drawing-room.  He and his wife are stirring people, and have done a deal of good; at least they say it’s doing good; if it were not, I should call it turning things upside down for very little purpose.  The new Vicar is a teetotaller, miss, and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of receipts for economical cooking, and is for making bread without yeast; and they both talk so much, and both at a time, that they knock one down as it were, and it’s not till they’re gone, and one’s a little at peace, that one can think that there were things one might have said on one’s own side of the question.  He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hay-field, and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because