"I do love motoring," said Mrs. Mercer, "especially on a lovely summer evening like this. I wish we had got a car of our own, Albert."

"My dear, when you married a poor country clergyman," said the Vicar, "you renounced all that sort of thing. We must be content with our one-hoss shay. Some day, perhaps, all the clergy of the Church of England will be properly paid for devoting their lives to the good of the community, instead of only a few of them. The labourer is worthy of his car. Ha! ha! But I'm afraid it won't happen in our time, if it ever happens at all. Too many Socialists and Radicals gnashing their teeth at us. In the meantime let's take the little pleasures that come in our way, and not envy those who are better off than we are. We must never forget that there are some who might think they had a right to envy us."

"Oh, yes, dear," said Mrs. Mercer. "We are very well off, really. I'm sure I don't envy anybody. And I really am enjoying myself now, and am going to, all the evening."

They were on their way to dine with the Pembertons at Grays. As the Vicarage horse was getting a trifle too aged to be called upon to make an effort of ten miles each way the Vicar had borrowed a car from the Abbey, and was now being carried softly through the country, which was at its most peaceful and soothing on a fine evening of early July, with the hay scenting the air and the sun slanting its rays over the wide and varied landscape.

"It was kind of Caroline to let us have the car," said Mrs. Mercer, reverting to the subject a little later. "It would have taken us hours to get there with poor old Tiglath-Pilezer, and I shouldn't have liked to bicycle to dinner at a house like Grays. I'm glad she sent us an open car. One sees the lovely country so much better."

"It's the smallest car they have," said the Vicar; "and I should have preferred a closed one for coming home in. However, we mustn't grumble. It's very kind, as you say, for his rich parishioners to lend their clergyman a car at all."

"I wonder who will be there to-night," said Mrs. Mercer. "Do you think it will be a big dinner-party, Albert? I really think I must get a new dress, if we are to begin dining out again. I am quite ashamed to appear in this one at the Abbey. I've worn it so often there."

"Mrs. Pemberton asked us in quite an informal way," said the Vicar, ignoring the latter part of his wife's speech. "There may be others there, or there may be just ourselves. I must confess I should rather like to meet a few people from the other side of the county. The Pembertons are quite on the edge of our circle, and they're about the only decent people in it."

"Except our own people at Abington," Mrs. Mercer corrected him. "We are very lucky in the Graftons, I must say."

"Yes, I suppose we are, as things go," said the Vicar. "I would rather have had regular country people, though, than rich Londoners. They get absorbed in their friends whom they bring down, and aren't of so much use to their country neighbours as they might be."

"Oh, but Albert, they so often ask us to dine. I'm sure they are very hospitable."

"I don't know that they've asked us so very often. They've asked us very seldom when they've had their smart parties. I suppose, as country bumpkins, we're not good enough. There isn't the intimate air about the house, either, that one might expect. There's a formality. They don't seem to know what to do when one just drops in for a cup of tea, or perhaps just to say something in the morning. They're not used to that sort of thing in London; I know that perfectly well. But they ought to know that it's usual in the country, and not make such a business of it. I hate always being announced by that pompous old Jarvis. One ought to be able to run in and out of the house, just as one does, for instance, with the Walters. They never do it with us either. It's chiefly owing to Miss Waterhouse. A governess, as I suppose she was, and been put into a position that's been too much for her! There isn't the friendliness I like to see in young girls."

"Perhaps they're rather afraid of you, dear. They always give me quite a nice welcome, if I happen to go there without you, which I don't very often do. And they do run in and out of the cottage, and Mollie goes there. I'm glad they have taken such a fancy to Mollie. She's come out wonderfully since they made a friend of her."

"She has come out a little too much for my taste. I feared it would turn her head to be taken notice of, and I ventured to give a friendly word of warning, which was not received as it should have been—by Miss Waterhouse, whom it really had nothing to do with. I'm sorry to have to say it of Mollie, but I'm sadly afraid there's something of the snob in her. More than once she has had an engagement at the Abbey when I wanted her to do something for me. Of course people living in a big house come before old friends. That's understood. But I didn't think Mollie would turn out like that, I must confess."

"Oh, but Albert dear, I'm sure she wouldn't neglect you for anybody. You've been so kind to her, and it has meant such a lot to her, your making a companion of her, and all. But, of course, it is nice for girls to have other girls to be friends with. I'm sure it would be just the same if the Graftons lived in a small house instead of a big one."

"I beg leave to doubt it, Gertrude. But here we are. The drive is about half a mile long. We shan't see the house for some distance yet."

They had turned in at some handsome lodge gates, and were going along a winding road which ran between iron railings, with fields on either side of it.

"It's not so nice as the park at Abington," said Mrs. Mercer; "more like a farm road except for the lodge. Is Grays as big a house as the Abbey?"

"Bigger, I should say," said her husband. "The Pembertons are a very old Meadshire family. I looked them up in a book in the library at the Abbey. Except the Clintons, over the other side, they are the oldest. They have often married into titled families. They are a good deal better than the Graftons, I should say. Sir James Grafton is only the third baronet, and his grandfather was a jeweller in Nottingham, the book says. Of course, they've made money, which stands for everything in these days. Oh, how that made me jump!"

Another car had come up behind them, of which the powerful horn had given warning that room was asked for it. The smaller car had changed gears at the beginning of the rise, and the larger one swung by it as it made way. Three girls were sitting together on the back seat, and waved as they were carried past. They were Caroline and Beatrix, with Mollie sitting between them.

"Now what on earth does that mean!" exclaimed the Vicar, in a tone of annoyance. "Mollie coming to dine here! But she doesn't even know them. And why didn't Caroline tell me they were coming, when I asked her for the car? Why couldn't we all have come together?"

These questions were presently answered. Bertie Pemberton had come down from London in the afternoon and brought a friend with him. A car had been sent over to Abington to ask that everybody who happened to be there should come over and dine. Caroline was also particularly asked to persuade little Miss Walter to come with them, and to take no denial. A note would be taken to her, but perhaps she wouldn't come unless she were pressed. This last piece of information, however, was not imparted to the Vicar, and he was left wondering how on earth Mollie came to be there, and with the full determination to find out later.

There was nothing lacking in the warmth of welcome accorded to their guests by the whole Pemberton family, which could hardly have been more loudly expressed if they had come to dine in an asylum for the deaf, and were qualified for residence there. The Vicar had quite forgotten his dislike of this noisy cheerful family. He had bicycled over on a hot day to see Mrs. Pemberton, had found that she had forgotten who he was for the moment, but by engaging her in conversation on the subjects of which she had previously unbosomed herself had regained the interest she had shown in him. He had been given his cup of tea, and shown the village hall, and told that the next time he came over he must come to lunch. Then Mrs. Pemberton had left cards at Abington Vicarage—the Vicar and his wife being out, unfortunately, at the time,—and before they could return the call had asked them to dine. It was an acquaintanceship, begun under the happiest auspices, which the Vicar quite hoped would ripen into a genuine friendship. He was inclined to like the free-and-easy ways of real old-established country people. They were apt, possibly, to think too much about horses and dogs, but that did not prevent their taking a genuine interest in their fellow-creatures, especially those who were dependent on them for a good deal of their satisfaction in life. Mrs. Pemberton, although she didn't look it, was a woman who did a great deal of good. She would have made an admirable clergyman's wife.

Father Brill, the Vicar of Grays, was also dining, in a cassock. He had only been in the place for three months, but had already established his right to be called Father and to wear a cassock instead of a coat. He was a tall spare man with a commanding nose and an agreeable smile. Old Mr. Pemberton had taken a fancy to him, though he was very outspoken with regard to his eccentricities. But he chaffed him just as freely to his face as he criticised him to others. His attitude towards him was rather like that of a fond father towards a mischievous child. "What do you think that young rascal of mine has been doing now?" was the note on which his references to Father Brill were based.

The Vicar, who was 'low' in doctrine, but inclined to be 'high' in practice—where it didn't matter—had cautiously commiserated Mrs. Pemberton on the extravagances of her pastor during his first visit. But he had discovered that they caused her no anxiety. The only thing she didn't care about was 'this confession'—auricular, she believed they called it. But as long as she wasn't expected to confess herself, which she should be very sorry to do, as it would be so awkward to ask Father Brill to dinner after it, she wasn't going to make any fuss. It would possibly do the young men of the place a lot of good to confess their sins to Father Brill, if he could induce them to do so; she was pretty certain it would do Bertie good, but, of course, he would never do it. As for the women, if they wanted to go in for that sort of thing, well, let 'em. Father Brill wasn't likely to do them any harm—with that nose. What she should have objected to would be to be interfered with in the things she ran herself in the parish. But they got on all right together there. In fact, she went her way and Father Brill went his, and neither of them interfered with the other.

The two clergymen sat on either side of their hostess, and the Vicar was rather inclined to envy the easy terms that Father Brill was on with her. It had not occurred to him to treat a lady in Mrs. Pemberton's position with anything but deference, to listen to her opinions politely, and not to press his own when they differed from hers. But here was Father Brill actually inviting her to discussion, and, while listening politely to what she had to say, finding food for amusement in it, and by no means hiding his amusement from her.

"I'm afraid you must be a good deal older than you admit to," he said. "You must have gained your opinions in girlhood, and they are about those that were held in the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century. That would make you about ninety-three now, and I must admit that you wear very well for your age."

Mrs. Pemberton seemed so to enjoy this kind of treatment that the Vicar took a leaf out of Father Brill's book and became a good deal more familiar, on the same lines, than he had ever thought of being in such a house as that, or at least with the older inhabitants of such a house. Perhaps he kept rather too much to the same lines. He asked Mrs. Pemberton whether she wore a wig, which as a matter of fact she did, though he was far from suspecting it; and as religious matters were being treated in a light vein, to which he had no objection, as long as anything like profanity was excluded, he begged her, if she should ever change her mind about confession, to confess to him and not to Father Brill. "I assure you, my dear lady," he said—Father Brill had once or twice called her 'my dear lady'—"that I shan't breathe a word of what you say to anybody—and I'm quite ready to be agreeably shocked."

Father Brill's eyebrows met ominously over his huge nose, and Mrs. Pemberton looked in some surprise at the Vicar, and then took a glance at his wine-glass. But at that moment Mr. Pemberton called out something to her from the foot of the table, and Effie Pemberton who was sitting on the right of the Vicar engaged him in talk. Otherwise he would have exploited this vein still further, for he felt he was making rather a success of it.

His wife, meantime, was enjoying herself immensely. The young people were all laughing and talking gaily, and she was not left out of it. Old Mr. Pemberton addressed long narratives to her, but occasionally broke off to shout out: "Eh, what's that? I didn't hear that," if an extra burst of laughter engaged his attention; and after such an interruption he would usually address himself next to Caroline, who was sitting on the other side of him. So Mrs. Mercer found that she need not devote herself entirely to him, and laughed away as merrily as any of them, if there was anything to laugh at, which there generally was.

They really were nice, these Pembertons, in spite of their loudness and their horsey tastes. Kate sat next to her, and looked very handsome, with her abundant hair beautifully dressed and her white firm flesh liberally displayed. She was some years younger than her sisters, and had not yet acquired that almost weather-beaten look which is apt to overtake young country women who spend the greater part of their waking hours out of doors, and was already beginning to show in Nora and Effie. She had a great deal to say to Bertie's friend who sat on the other side of her, but she by no means neglected Mrs. Mercer, and whenever conversation was general brought her into it. She also occasionally talked to her alone, when Mr. Pemberton was engaged with Caroline.

"I like that little Waters girl, or whatever her name is," she said on one of these occasions, looking across to where Mollie was sitting between Nora and Bertie Pemberton. "She's quiet, but she does know how to laugh. Quite pretty too."

"Oh, she's a dear," said Mrs. Mercer enthusiastically. "We are awfully fond of her. I don't know what my husband would do without her."

Kate laughed. "That's what Bertie seems to be feeling," she said. "He spotted her when we went over to Abington the other day. We rather chaffed him about it, as the Grafton girls are so extraordinarily pretty, and we hadn't taken so much notice of her ourselves. But he insisted upon her being sent for to-night, and made Nora write. I'm glad she came. We all three make pals of men, but we like girls too. I hope we shall see more of her. I expect we shall, if Bertie has anything to do with it."

She turned to her other neighbour, and Mrs. Mercer looked across to where Bertie Pemberton was entertaining Mollie with some vivacious narrative that was making her laugh freely. It was quite true that she could laugh, and looked very pretty as she did so. Mrs. Mercer had had no idea how pretty she really was. Her generous heart gave a jump of pleasure as she saw how Bertie Pemberton was addressing himself to her. Supposing—only supposing—that that should happen! How perfectly splendid for dear little Mollie, who had had such a dull life, but was worth any sort of life that could be given her. And how pleased her husband would be! They would have something to talk about when they went home.

They played round games at a table in the drawing-room—all of them, including Mr. Pemberton, who did not like to be left out of anything—to an accompaniment of much shouting and laughter. The two cars were kept waiting for half an hour before the guests departed, and they returned as they had come. The Vicar had wanted Mollie to accompany him and his wife, but as she had hesitated, with a glance at Beatrix, which plainly showed her own wishes in the matter, Caroline had put in her claim and settled it for her.

So the Vicar started on the homeward drive not in the best of humours, especially as the other car was being kept back while the three girls were still laughing and talking as if they were going to stay all night, although he and his wife had been permitted to leave when they were ready to do so.

"Really, Miss Caroline has a fairly abrupt way with her when it suits her," he said. "If we hadn't been indebted to her for the loan of the car, I should certainly have insisted that Mollie come with us. We live nearly opposite, and the Pemberton's car will have to go out of the way to take her home. Mollie ought to have had the sense to see it herself, and the pluck to take matters into her own hands. She is allowing herself to be led away by all the notice she is receiving. I have yet to learn exactly how it was that she came to be here to-night. There's something I don't understand, and I don't quite like it."

"Oh, I can tell you all about that, Albert dear," said Mrs. Mercer eagerly. "I've been longing to tell you, and you'll be so pleased. It was Bertie Pemberton. He has taken an immense fancy to Mollie, and it was he who insisted that she should be sent for with the Grafton girls. Kate told me so herself, and they like her so much, and they are going to make Mrs. Pemberton call on Mrs. Walter, and have Mollie over there often. Just fancy, if anything should come of it!"

"Well, I never!" said the Vicar in his coldest tones.

Mrs. Mercer felt the drop in the temperature. "But it would be such a splendid thing for Mollie, dear," she pleaded, "and she does so come out in company. I thought she looked quite as pretty as the Grafton girls to-night, and I was quite proud of her, the way she behaved, enjoying herself, but never pushing herself forward, and everybody liking her and all."

"If you've quite finished, Gertrude," said the Vicar, as coldly as before, "I should like to say something. I'd no idea—no idea whatever—that it was on that young man's invitation that Mollie was there to-night and——"

"Oh, but it wasn't, dear. It was Nora who wrote to her. Of course he wouldn't have done it."

"Let me finish, please. Here is a young girl living, with her mother, almost under our protection. Whatever friends they have made here they have made through us. I was glad enough for Mollie to be taken up by the Graftons, although she does not belong to their class by birth, and there is some danger of her thinking herself their equal in a way which they may perhaps come not to like, if she pushes it too far. That is why I wished her not to go to the Abbey too much, unless I, or you, were with her. I feel a responsibility towards the girl."

"But, Albert dear, surely it has got past that now! She's their friend just as much as we are. And they love having her there."

"Please let me finish, Gertrude. I know she's their friend, and now see what it has led to! By your own showing, Mrs. Pemberton doesn't even know Mrs. Walter. She is only going to call on her, because her daughter is going to make her. Yet, on the invitation of a young man, who has taken a fancy to her,—well, on his sister's invitation then, if you must be so particular, which she, this time, is made to give,—Mollie can so far forget herself as to go to the house of perfect strangers and be entertained by them. Why, it's lending herself to—to— I'd really rather not say what. To me it seems perfectly outrageous. Have you, I should like to ask, really looked upon Mollie in the light of a girl that any young man can throw down his glove to, and she'll pick it up?"

"Oh, no, Albert dear," expostulated Mrs. Mercer, greatly distressed by the suggestion. "It isn't like that at all. She isn't like that, and I'm sure he isn't like that either. I was watching him at dinner, and afterwards, and I believe he really is in——"

"I don't want to hear any more," said the Vicar abruptly, throwing himself back in his seat and folding his arms. "I shall call on Mrs. Walter to-morrow and have it out with her—and with Mollie."

There was a toot of a big bass horn behind them, and the other car went sliding past. The three girls were sitting together as before, and waved gaily to them as they passed. Mrs. Mercer returned the greeting. The Vicar took no notice of it at all, and remained obstinately silent for the rest of the drive home.