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When they were opposite an opening through which, by day, the doctor's house could be seen, they observed a light in one of his rooms, although it was now about two o'clock. "The doctor is not abed yet," said Mrs. Melbury. "Hard study, no doubt," said her husband. "One would think that, as he seems to have nothing to do about here by day, he could at least afford to go to bed early at night.
He would walk across to his old lodging, to learn how his locum tenens had got on in his absence. In leaving Melbury's door he looked back at the house. There was economy in living under that roof, and economy was desirable, but in some way he was dissatisfied with the arrangement; it immersed him so deeply in son-in-lawship to Melbury. He went on to his former residence.
She's been too far among the wise ones to be astonished at anything she can hear among us folks in Hintock." At last the time came for breaking up, Melbury and his family being the earliest to leave, the two card-players still pursuing their game doggedly in the corner, where they had completely covered Giles's mahogany table with chalk scratches.
"Now, neighbors," said Melbury, on joining them, "as it is getting late, we'll leg it home again as fast as we can. I ought to tell you that there has been some mistake some arrangement entered into between Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpiers which I didn't quite understand an important practice in the Midland counties has come to him, which made it necessary for her to join him to-night so she says.
He said that he had looked in on his way down, to tell her that they did not expect her father to make up his contract if he was not well. Mr. Melbury would give him another week, and they would go their journey with a short load that day. "They are done," said Marty, "and lying in the cart-house." "Done!" he repeated. "Your father has not been too ill to work after all, then?"
"But I did not know what you would say." "If he comes and lives in England, not too near here and in a respectable way, and wants you to come to him, I am not sure that I'll oppose him in wishing it," muttered Melbury. "I'd stint myself to keep you both in a genteel and seemly style. But go abroad you never shall with my consent." There the question rested that day.
In his declining years the store had been unfolded in the form of rheumatisms, pricks, and spasms, in every one of which Melbury recognized some act which, had its consequence been contemporaneously made known, he would wisely have abstained from repeating. On a summons by Grammer Oliver to breakfast, he left the shed.
Grace assented to the proposal, and the woman told her tale unskilfully, for want of practice, as she declared. Mr. Melbury was standing by, and exclaimed, contemptuously, "Tell her fortune, indeed! Her fortune has been told by men of science what do you call 'em? Phrenologists. You can't teach her anything new.
But it was not heavy for its size; Mrs. Dollery herself carried it into the house. Tim Tangs, the hollow-turner, Bawtree, Suke Damson, and others, looked knowing, and made remarks to each other as they watched its entrance. Melbury stood at the door of the timber-shed in the attitude of a man to whom such an arrival was a trifling domestic detail with which he did not condescend to be concerned.
But Walter's house and the one adjoining it in the Avenue, though built in the same style, or with the same lack of it, were much bigger, and had divided between them an old garden of a quarter of an acre, which, although it would have been nothing much at Kencote, almost attained to the dignity of "grounds" at Melbury Park.
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