A Tale of a Lonely Parish | Page 6

in his views. Nevertheless he was very useful at Penny
Readings, and on one of these occasions produced a very ingenious
ghost for the delectation of the rustics, by means of a piece of plate
glass and a couple of lamps.
There had indeed been festivities at the vicarage to which as many as
three clergymen's wives had been invited, but these were rare indeed.
For months at a time Mrs. Ambrose reigned in undisputed possession
of the woman's social rights in Billingsfield. She was an excellent
person in every way. She had once been handsome and even now she
was fine-looking, of goodly stature, if also of goodly weight; rosy, even
rubicund, in complexion, and rotund of feature; looking at you rather
severely out of her large grey eyes, but able to smile very cheerfully
and to show an uncommonly good set of teeth; twisting her thick grey
hair into a small knot at the back of her head and then covering it with a
neatly made cap which she considered becoming to her time of life;
dressed always with extreme simplicity and neatness, glorying in her
good sense and in her stout shoes; speaking of things which she called
"neat" with a devotional admiration and expressing the extremest

height of her disapprobation when she said anything was "very untidy."
A motherly woman, a practical woman, a good housekeeper and a good
wife, careful of small things because generally only small things came
in her way, devotedly attached to her husband, whom she regarded with
perfect justice as the best man of her acquaintance, adding, however,
with somewhat precipitous rashness that he was the best man in the
world. She took also a great interest in his pupils and busied herself
mightily with their welfare. Since the arrival of the new doctor who
was suspected of free-thinking, she had shown a strong leaning towards
homoeopathy, and prescribed small pellets of belladonna for the
Honourable Cornelius's cold and infinitesimal drops of aconite for John
Short's headaches, until she observed that John never had a headache
unless he had worked too much, and Angleside always had a cold when
he did not want to work at all. Especially in the department of the
commissariat she showed great activity, and the reputation the vicar
had acquired for feeding his pupils well had perhaps more to do with
his success than he imagined. She was never tired of repeating that
Englishmen needed plenty of good food, and she had no principles
which she did not practise. She even thought it right to lecture young
Angleside upon his idleness at stated intervals. He always replied with
great gentleness that he was awfully stupid, you know, and Mr.
Ambrose was awfully good about it and he hoped he should not be
pulled when he went up. And strange to relate he actually passed his
examination and matriculated, to his own immense astonishment and to
the no small honour and glory of the Reverend Augustin Ambrose,
vicar of Billingsfield, Essex. But when that great day arrived certain
events occurred which are worthy to be chronicled and remembered.
CHAPTER II.
In the warm June weather young Angleside went up to pass his
examination for entrance at Trinity. There is nothing particularly
interesting or worthy of note in that simple process, though at that time
the custom of imposing an examination had only been recently
imported from Oxford. For one whole day forty or fifty young fellows
from all parts of the country sat at the long dining-tables in the
beautiful old hall and wrote as busily as they could, answering the

printed questions before them, and eyeing each other curiously from
time to time. The weather was warm and sultry, the trees were all in
full leaf and Cambridge was deserted. Only a few hard-reading men,
who stayed up during the Long, wandered out with books at the backs
of the colleges or strayed slowly through the empty courts, objects of
considerable interest to the youths who had come up for the entrance
examination--chiefly pale men in rather shabby clothes with old gowns
and battered caps, and a general appearance of being the worse for
wear.
Angleside had been in Cambridge before and consequently lost no time
in returning to Billingsfield when the examination was over. Short was
to spend the summer at the vicarage, reading hard until the term began,
when he was to go up and compete for a minor scholarship; Angleside
was to wait until he heard whether he had passed, and was then going
abroad to meet his father and to rest from the extreme exertion of
mastering the "Apology" and the first books of the "Memorabilia."
John drove over to meet the Honourable Cornelius, who was in a
terrible state of anxiety and left