r manner should unbend, showing her character in
a new light. She herself enjoyed the change, hardly knowing why; she
enjoyed a little passage of arms with John, and it amused her more than
she could have expected to be young again, to annoy him, to break the
peace and heal it again in five minutes. But what happened entirely
failed to amuse the squire, who did not regard such diversions as
harmless; and moreover she was far from expecting the effect which her
treatment of John Short produced upon his scholarly but enthusiastic
temper.

CHAPTER IX.

The squire had remarked that John Short seemed to have a peculiar temper,
and Mrs. Goddard had observed the same thing. What has gone before
sufficiently explains the change in John's manner, and the difference in
his behaviour was plainly apparent even to Mr. and Mrs. Ambrose. The
vicar indeed was wise enough to see that John was very much attracted by
Mrs. Goddard, but he was also wise enough to say nothing about it. His
wife, however, who had witnessed no love-making for nearly thirty years,
except the courtship of the young physician who had married her daughter,
attributed John's demeanour to no such disturbing cause. He was
overworked, she said; he was therefore irritable; he had of course never
taken that excellent homoeopathic remedy, highly diluted aconite, since
he had left the vicarage; the consequence was that he was subject to
nervous headache--she only hoped he would not be taken ill on the eve of
the examination for honours. She hoped, too, that he would prolong his
holiday to the very last moment, for the country air and the rest he
enjoyed were sure to do him so much good. With regard, to the extension
of John's visit, the vicar thought differently, although he held his
peace. There were many reasons why John should not become attached to
Mrs. Goddard both for her sake and his own, and if he staid long, the
vicar felt quite sure that he would fall in love with her. She was
dangerously pretty, she was much older than John--which in the case of
very young men constitutes an additional probability--she evidently took
an innocent pleasure in his society, and altogether such a complication
as was likely to ensue was highly undesirable. Therefore, when Mrs.
Ambrose pressed John to stay longer than he had intended, the vicar not
only gave him no encouragement, but spoke gravely of the near approach of
the contest for honours, of the necessity of concentrat