arden,"
observed Father Robertson.

Rosamund was frankly delighted.

"Bless you for calling them mine!" she said. "That's just what I'm
longing to do."

The wind and the rain were till hanging about in a fashion rather
undecided. It was a morning of gusts and of showers. The rooks swayed in
the elm tops, or flew up under the scudding clouds of a treacherous
sky. There was a strong smell of damp earth, and the turf of the wide
spreading lawns looked spongy.

"Oh, how English this is!" said Rosamund enthusiastically to the Father
as they set forth together. "It's like the smell of the soul of England.
I love it. I should like to lie on the grass and feel the rain on my
face."

"You know nothing of rheumatism evidently," said Father Robertson, in a
voice that was smiling.

"No, but I suppose I should if I gave way to my impulse. And the rooks
would be shocked."

"Do you mean the Cathedral dignitaries?"

They were gently gay as they walked along, but very soon Rosamund,
in her very human but wholly unconscious way, put her hand on Father
Robertson's arm.

"There it is!"

"Your house?"

"Yes. Isn't it sweet? Doesn't it look peacefully old? I should like to
grow old like that, calmly, unafraid and unrepining. I knew you'd love
it."

He had not said so, but that did not matter.

"There's a dear old caretaker, with only one tooth in front and such
nice eyes, who'll let us in. Not an electric bell!"

She gave him a look half confidential, half humorous, and wholly
girlish.

"We have to pull it. That's so much nicer!"

She pulled, and the dear old caretaker, a woman in Cathedral black, with
the look of a verger's widow all over her, showed the tooth in a smile
as she peeped round the door.

"And now the garden!" said Rosamund, in the withdrawn voice of an
intense anticipation, half an hour later, when Father Robertson had
seen, and been consulted, about everything from kitchen to attic.

She turned round to Mrs. Soper, as the verger's widow--indeed she was
that!--was called.

"Shall you mind if we stay a good while in the garden, Mrs. Soper? It's
so delightful there. Will it bother you?"

"Most pleased, ma'am! I couldn't wish for anything else. You do hear
the chimes most beautiful from there. But it's very damp. That we must
allow."

"Are you afraid of the damp, Father?"

"Not a bit."

"I knew you wouldn't be," she said, almost exultantly.

Mrs. Soper took her stand by the drawing-room window