On that occasion Mrs. Stafford was too late to interfere, but as
a rule she exercised a restraining influence, and while she lived
the vicar was not allowed to go about with holes in his trousers.
After her death Mr. Stafford mourned her sincerely and cherished
her memory, but all the same he was glad to be able to wear his
old boots. However, he had a cold bath every morning and kept
his hands irreproachable, not from vanity but from an inbred
instinct of personal care. Yvonne of the Castle, who spoke her
mind as Yvonne's of the Castle commonly do, said that the fewer
clothes Mr. Stafford wore the better she liked him, because he
was always clean and they were not.

Mr. Stafford had three children; Val, late of the Dorchester
Regiment, Rowsley an Artillery lieutenant two years younger,
and Isabel the curate, a tall slip of a girl of nineteen. They
were all beloved, but Val was the prop of the family and the
pride of his father's heart. Invalided out of the Army after
six weeks' fighting, with an honourable distinction and an
irremediably shattered arm, he had been given the agency of the
Wanhope property, and lived at home, where the greater part of
his three hundred a year went to pay the family bills. Most of
these were for what Mr. Stafford gave away, for the vicar had no
idea of the value of money, and was equally generous with Val's
income and his own.

Altogether Mr. Stafford was a contented and happy man, and his
only worry was the thought, which crossed his mind now and then,
that Chilmark for a young man of Val's age was dull, and that the
Wanhope agency led nowhere. If Val had been an ambitious man!