Mr. Marvin always went round the other way.

"Seems as he has forgotten her wonderful quick," commented the women
of Farlingford. But perhaps they were wrong. If he had forgotten,
he might be expected to go round by the south side of the church by
accident occasionally, especially as it was the shorter way from the
rectory to the porch. He was an absent-minded man, but he always
remembered, as River Andrew himself admitted, to go north about.
And his wife's grave was overgrown by salted grass as were the rest.

Farlingford had accepted him, when his College, having no use for
such a dreamer elsewhere, gave him the living, not only with
resignation, but with equanimity. This remote parish, cut off from
the busier mainland by wide heaths and marshes, sparsely provided
with ill-kept roads, had never looked for a bustling activity in its
rectors. Their forefathers had been content with a gentleman, given
to sport and the pursuits of a country squire, marked on the seventh
day by a hearty and robust godliness. They would have preferred
Parson Marvin to have handled a boat and carried a gun. But he had
his good qualities. He left them alone. And they are the most
independent people in the world.

When his wife died, his sister, the widow of an Indian officer,
bustled eastward, from a fashionable Welsh watering-place, just to
satisfy herself, as she explained to her West-country friends, that
he would not marry his cook before six months elapsed. After that
period she proposed to wash her hands of him. She was accompanied
by her only child, Miriam, who had just left school.