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She too had daughters, but, as she used to say to Mrs Allaby, she had been less fortunate than Mrs Allaby herself, for one by one they had married and left her so that her old age would have been desolate indeed if her Professor had not been spared to her.
Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and Grandmamma Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to get on with than Papa and Mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good, and were more worldly; moreover they were grown-up people especially Grandpapa Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very much grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was always something that kept him from loving any grown-up people very much except one or two of the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything that he could imagine.
Mrs Cowey, of course, knew the run of all the bachelor clergy in the University, and was the very person to assist Mrs Allaby in finding an eligible assistant for her husband, so this last named lady drove over one morning in the November of 1825, by arrangement, to take an early dinner with Mrs Cowey and spend the afternoon.
So quickly was all managed that the two unreliable sisters were actually out of the house before Theobald's next visit which was on the Sunday following his first. This time Theobald felt quite at home in the house of his new friends for so Mrs Allaby insisted that he should call them. She took, she said, such a motherly interest in young men, especially in clergymen.
True immediately on arriving within a ten mile radius of his father's house, an enchantment fell upon him, so that his knees waxed weak, his greatness departed, and he again felt himself like an overgrown baby under a perpetual cloud; but then he was not often at Elmhurst, and as soon as he left it the spell was taken off again; once more he became the fellow and tutor of his college, the Junior Dean, the betrothed of Christina, the idol of the Allaby womankind.
When the curtain dropped, it would be buzzed about the house that the scene just witnessed had been drawn from real life, and had actually occurred in the household of the Rev. Theobald Pontifex, who had married a Miss Allaby, etc., etc. As regards Ernest the suspicions which had already crossed her mind were deepened, but she thought it better to leave the matter where it was.
Theobald fell into the part assigned to him more easily than Mrs Cowey and Mrs Allaby had dared to hope.
The interview, like all other good things had to come to an end; the days were short, and Mrs Allaby had a six miles' drive to Crampsford. When she was muffled up and had taken her seat, Mr Allaby's factotum, James, could perceive no change in her appearance, and little knew what a series of delightful visions he was driving home along with his mistress.
So it was settled that Mr Allaby's health was not so strong as it had been, and that he stood in need of help in the performance of his Sunday duty. Mrs Allaby had a great friend a certain Mrs Cowey, wife of the celebrated Professor Cowey.
He was not as a general rule sensitive to the charms of the fair sex, indeed he had hardly been thrown in with any women except his Aunts Allaby, and his Aunt Alethea, his mother, his sister Charlotte and Mrs Jay; sometimes also he had had to take off his hat to the Miss Skinners, and had felt as if he should sink into the earth on doing so, but his shyness had worn off with Ellen, and the pair had become fast friends.
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