slender wife met him under the beeches that made an avenue of the
lane leading to Fairmead vicarage.

'Yes!' was the answer, which the vicar was not slow to understand.

'I cannot say I expected much from your conversation, and perhaps we
ought not to wish it. We are likely to see with selfish eyes, for
what shall we do without her?'

'Dear Albinia! You always taunted me with having married your sister
as much as yourself.'

'So I shall again, if you cannot give her up with a good grace.'

'If I could have had my own way in disposing of her.'

'Perhaps the hero of your own composition might be less satisfactory
to her than is Kendal.'

'At least he should be minus the children!'

'I fancy the children are one great attraction. Do you know how many
there are?'

'Three; but if Albinia knows their ages she involves them in a
discreet haze. I imagine some are in their teens.'

'Impossible, Winifred, he is hardly five-and-thirty.'

'Thirty-eight, he said yesterday, and he married very early. I asked