nce. They upset everything.

I've come to the vicarage. When Delphine heard of our departure from
"Pastimes" she developed a sudden and violent desire to have me for a
visitor for a short time before I left. She is nervy and depressed
("tired out after her hard work!" the dear Vicar translates it), and has
got it into her head that my society is the one and only thing that can
set her right. It is flattering, and convenient into the bargain, for
we are lending "Pastimes" to the widow of a poor clergyman, and it will
be a help to her to have me at hand until she has settled down. It
seemed a waste of good things to leave the house empty through all the
lovely autumn months. This poor soul is delighted to come; we are
delighted to have her; the cook and housemaid are--_resigned_ to the
change of mistress; more one cannot expect.

I've been here a week, and am already endorsing the theory that you can
never really know a person until you have lived together beneath the
same roof. Before I came, I thought the Vicar as nearly perfect a
husband as a man could be, and Delphine about as unsatisfactory a wife.
Now, after studying them for one short week, I have modified both
opinions. She is a lovable, warm-hearted, well-meaning, weak, vain,
dissatisfied child! He is a very fine, a very noble, a very blind, and
irritatingly inconsiderate man! On Wednesday he ordered dinner an hour
earlier for his own convenience, and he never came home at all. On
Friday he said he would be out all day, and walked in at one o'clock,
bringing three visitors in his train, demanding a hot lunch. He also,
it appears, is difficult about money, which is not in any sense meant to
imply that he is mean, but simply that he wishes to give away as much as
possible to other people, and to deny his own household in order to be
able to do it. I was in the room one day when Delphine presented the
monthly bills, and his face was a network of worry and depression. The
grocer's book was not included; he asked for it, and said it had been
missing some time. Delphine prevaricated. I knew as well as if I'd
been told that she was afraid to show it!

After he had gone out her mood changed. She lifted the little red books
from the table, flung them one after the other to the ceiling, caught
them with an agile hand, and sent them spinning into the corner of the
room. This done, she danced round the table, came to a standstill in
front of my chair, and