Still there was a good house with an excellent garden, too good
indeed, with its beautiful and ancient rooms which a former rector of
archaeological knowledge and means had in part restored to their
pristine state, while for the rest his tastes were simple and his
needs few, for, of course, he neither drank wine nor smoked.
Therefore, as has been said, he took the living with thankfulness and
determined to make the best of it on a total income of about L350 a year.



CHAPTER II

ISOBEL KISSES GODFREY

On the whole Monk's Acre suited Mr. Knight fairly well. It is true
that he did not like the Abbey, as it was still called, of which the
associations and architectural beauty made no appeal to him, and
thought often with affection of the lodging-house-like abode in which
he had dwelt in his southern seaport town amid the Victorian
surroundings that were suited to his Victorian nature. The glorious
church, too, irritated him, partly because it was so glorious, and
notwithstanding all that the Reformation had done to mar it, so
suggestive of papistical practice and errors, and partly because the
congregation was so scanty in that great expanse of nave and aisle, to
say nothing of the chancel and sundry chapels, that they looked like a
few wandering sheep left by themselves in a vast and almost emptied
fold. Nor was this strange, seeing that the total population of the
parish was but one hundred and forty-seven souls.