him with the awful noise he made. Then, amid all this cry, there was, as papa said, little “wool,” neither striking argument, nor lofty thought, nor simple earnest practical lesson. We could but echo his hope of improvement from the bottom of our hearts, convinced it could not be that his future son-in-law should be dismissed from his curacy for mental incapacity.
A few days later papa asked Mr. Pembroke to dine with us, telling him he was sorry he could not invite anybody to meet him, as we never had company at the parsonage. It fell therefore to the curate’s lot to lead Sarah to her place at the head of the table that day, and as far as looks went, nobody could deny they were a very suitable and striking pair. She was tall and elegant in figure, and her face, though not exactly beautiful, was interesting, her complexion very fair and pale, her hair luxuriant, and shining like silken threads of gold, and he—but I think I have described him sufficiently before.
Of course Mr. Pembroke did not neglect to inquire of Sarah after her cough; her answer was not in words but in kind, and being unfortunately timed at the moment she was raising a spoonful of soup to her lips, had the result of upsetting the same upon her dress, a light blue silk, which bore the memorial stains to its dying day. Mr. Pembroke’s next words were spoken too low to be audible to anybody but Sarah, to whom they were addressed. Actually whispering to her, I thought, so that chrysalis pity is already changing its nature—but alas! I afterwards learnt those few low-breathed syllables had only been “Do let me persuade you to try De Jongh’s cod-liver oil.” There was very little conversation that day at our dinner-table worthy of being repeated; we girls were far too shy to speak unless we were spoken to; the only spontaneous remark Sarah offered to her right-hand neighbour during the first course, being to ask whether he would take a little more soup, while during the second the same inquiry was hazarded respecting some chickens. Thus the talk was almost exclusively between the two gentlemen.
“I had an old Cambridge friend of your name,” said papa, “Pembroke, of Trinity, he was of the same year as myself, and we took orders together, but I have not met nor heard anything of him for many a year. It may be he is a relation of yours: is it possible, your father?”
“My father—no—my father—is—not in orders,” returned our curate, with marked confusion of manner and hesitation of voice.
“No,—well certainly, my friend Pembroke in his youth bore no resemblance to you; he was tall, but his figure was much slighter, and his features—”
“My form,” interrupted Mr. Pembroke, before papa had time to complete the picture of his old friend, “my form, I have been told by an eminent sculptor, presents the happy medium between the Apollo Belvidere and the Farnese Hercules.”
Certainly our new curate was not lacking in vanity, and took small pains to conceal it. It was difficult to preserve one’s gravity at this speech; but papa’s countenance was a model of decorum as he replied,
“A most just compliment, sir. My poor old friend, on the contrary, would have felt such an one ridiculous applied to himself. His face, too, was what no painter would have chosen as a model for his ideal, though the expression made it beautiful in my eyes.”
“Like the sunlight on my moor,” remarked Rose, timidly, blushing at the sound of her own voice.
“Ah, expression and sunlight may be all very well in their way, but give me the face and the landscape which are not dependent for their beauty on such adventitious aids.” And Mr. Pembroke blew his nose at the conclusion of this observation, by way of sounding a trumpet in praise of its irreproachable Grecian outline.
Papa seemed to think we had now had enough on the subject of personal beauty, and the word “landscape” prompted him to ask his guest if he had travelled much. But Mr. Pembroke had never been out of England, and seemed to have found but little worthy of contemplation in it, nothing certainly in comparison worthy with his own matchless form and features.
The conversation was next turned by papa upon books, ever his darling theme. He met, however, with no sympathy.
“Ah, books are all very well for monks and hermits,” said Mr. Pembroke, “but man in his natural state is a sociable animal, and I acknowledge that my fellow-man has much more interest for me than all the wisdom that ever was printed.”
“And all the folly, too, Mr. Pembroke? Don’t you care for novels, either?” I ventured to ask.
“Better to live romances than to read them,” replied that gentleman, with a volume of affected sentiment in his tone.
“I am afraid,” said papa, dryly, “you will not find the phases of real life so interesting here. We are quite out of the pale of society in this place.”
“Is there absolutely no one with whom you can associate in the parish?” inquired Mr. Pembroke dismayed.
“Neither man, woman, or child,” returned papa, decisively, “the whole population is composed of labourers and one or two small tenant farmers.”
“Surely,” expostulated the Curate, “I saw a lady in church on Sunday—two middle-aged and most respectable ladies in fact—with a footman attending them.”
“Miss Arabella Green!” we girls exclaimed in chorus, while papa proceeded to give some further account of the lady.
“True,” he said; “Miss Arabella Green is, as you remarked, a most respectable lady, who will, I have no doubt, be delighted to welcome you to her house, though I should scarcely imagine her society would be the most agreeable to a young man’s fancy.” (Miss Arabella Green was, by the way, the ugliest woman I have ever seen in my life; plain, is a term totally inadequate to her description, she was positively and irreclaimably ugly.) “She is very rich,” papa went on “and