Mrs. Lashmar rang with emphasis, and for the next five minutes her contralto swelled through the vicarage, rendering inaudible the replies she kept demanding from a half rebellious, half intimidated servant.  She was not personally a coarse woman, and her manners did not grossly offend against the convention of good-breeding; but her nature was self-assertive.  She could not brook a semblance of disregard for her authority, yet, like women in general, had no idea of how to rule.  The small, round face had once been pretty; now, with its prominent eyes, in-drawn lips, and obscured chin, it inspired no sympathetic emotion, rather an uneasiness and an inclination for retreat.  In good humour or in ill, Mrs. Lashmar was aggressive.  Her smile conveyed an amiable defiance; her look of grave interest alarmed and subdued.

“I have a line from Dyce,” remarked the vicar, as at length he applied himself to his lukewarm egg and very hard toast.  “He thinks of running down.”

“When?”

“He doesn’t say.”

“Then why did he write?  I’ve no patience with those vague projects.  Why did he write until he had decided on the day?”

“Really, I don’t know,” answered Mr. Lashmar, feebly.  His wife, in this mood, had a dazing effect upon him.

“Let me see the letter.”

Mrs. Lashmar perused the half-dozen lines in her son’s handwriting.

“Why, he does say!” she exclaimed in her deepest and most disdainful chord.  “He says ‘before long.’”

“True.  But I hardly think that conveys—­”

“Oh, please don’t begin a sophistical argument He says when he is coming, and that’s all I want to know here’s a letter, I see, from that silly Mrs. Barker—­her husband has quite given up drink, and earns good wages, sad the eldest boy has a place—­pooh!”

“All very good news, it seems to me,” remarked the vicar, slightly raising his eyebrows.

But one of Mrs. Lashmar’s little peculiarities was that, though she would exert herself to any extent for people whose helpless circumstances utterly subjected them to her authority, she lost all interest in them as soon as their troubles were surmounted, and even viewed with resentment that result of her own efforts.  Worse still, from her point of view, if the effort had largely been that of the sufferers themselves—­as in this case.  Mrs. Barker, a washerwoman who had reformed her sottish husband, was henceforth a mere offence in the eyes of the vicar’s wife.

“As silly a letter as ever I read!” she exclaimed, throwing aside the poor little sheet of cheap note-paper with its illiterate gratitude.  “Oh, here’s something from Lady Susan—­pooh!  Another baby.  What do I care about her babies!  Not one word about Dyce—­ not one word.  Now, really!”

“I don’t remember what you expected,” remarked the vicar, mildly.