You have been good to her for twenty years, she says." "She makes an old man of me," returned the rector musingly.

"I remember her such a tiny thing in a white frock and curls.

Tell her what we have been talking about, and beg her to excuse me.

I _must_ go home." He took his hat from the table, shook hands with Wingfold, and walked back to the inn.

There he found his horses bedded, and the hostler away.
His coachman was gone too, nobody knew whither.
To sleep at the inn would have given pointed offense, but he would rather have done so than go back to the Manor House to hear his curate abused.