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As the Barclays had come laden with butter and bacon from their Yorkshire farm and Mrs. Bill had done some good work on the side with her husband’s ex-batman, who had a licence to keep pigs, and the Marling fowls happened to be laying, a proper Sunday breakfast was provided and Mrs. Bill and Lettice reported that even the two nannies had expressed satisfaction. Mrs. Marling asked who was coming to church, adding that Bishop Joram was taking the service.

The ex-Bishop of Mngangaland, now a canon of Barchester with one of the beautiful houses in the Close, was universally liked and even Mrs. Bill, whose idea of Sunday morning was to put on trousers and give her husband’s horses severe exercise and an extra grooming, said if it was that old pet she would hold the fort with anyone and would bring the two elder children. Lettice also wanted to come with Diana and Clare and it was agreed that her Barclay children and the younger Bill Marlings should go with the perambulator contingent and visit Mrs. Cox, who kept lodgings, sometimes obliged as cook at the Hall, and always had peppermints in a glass bottle owing to being a cousin of the postmistress, who kept the shop.

“And what about Oliver Cromwell?” said Mrs. Bill, whose keen sense of humour had caused her to choose this pet name for her brother-in-law.

“I think not,” said Oliver, rather weakening his case by saying that his eyes were worrying him.

“Now that’s naughty,” said Mrs. Bill. “I suppose you know the service by heart and if you don’t you ought to. That’s what it’s there for.”

Mr. Marling asked in a loud voice, of no one in particular, what the doose Mrs. Bill meant.

“The pater does love teasing,” said Mrs. Bill. “You know quite well what I mean, pater. If you take children while they’re young they get it all by heart, I mean the ordinary service not the collects and all those bits and pieces, and then there they are. I can say right through the morning and evening service without a book. The words are just in you. Turn the tap and out they all come, and one doesn’t need to even think. Of course when the Government go altering everything it’s more difficult.”

Mrs. Marling said she much disliked being fair to the present Government, but it was no use pretending that they had revised or deposited the Prayer Book, and just as well, for the people who had done it, though it had upset everything, were at least gentlemen.

“I expect you’re right, mater,” said Mrs. Bill good-humouredly. “But really the way they’ve vetted the marriage service gets me down. Give me the good old marriage service. It makes sense, and if anyone thinks a girl is likely to be upset by the prayers, take it from me you could say nursery rhymes and most of them wouldn’t know the difference. You really feel quite dotty while you’re being married. I know I did and I’m sure the girls will, not but what they know of course what marriage means, brought up with animals as they’ve been, but as I say, take it from me a few good old English prayers aren’t going to put them off their stride. Am I talking too much?”

“Yes,” said her husband. “I’m coming to church and then I’m going round the place with father before lunch. You coming, Barclay? That’s right. And you, Oliver?”

“I don’t know,” said Oliver, stammering slightly as he often did when thinking of Jessica. “Jessica and Aubrey are coming before lunch and I must be here when they come.”

“If little Jessica’s comin’ I’m not going round the place,” said Mr. Marling. “You young fellers can go,” on which Bill Marling and Tom Barclay expressed an equal determination to sacrifice all to Jessica Dean.

Oliver looked black, but said nothing.

“Lucy,” said her father, “what’s Adams?”

Lucy, who by long practice usually knew what her father meant, explained in a loud but kind voice that he used to be chapel but owing to the insistence of the Reverend Enoch Arden on the equality of all men, a thing that Mr. Adams said was impossible, he had for some years been a staunch supporter of the Church of England, at which her father grunted a kind of approval and said he must go and look at the lessons for the day, a task that he had for many years punctiliously fulfilled ever since the dreadful day when the gilding on the pages of a new Bible that he had presented to the church made two pages stick together and he had read straight on for several verses before he discovered his mistake.

“That’s all right,” said her father. “Thought he might be a Dissenter.” He moved ponderously out of the room, and the rest of the party went about their various jobs till a little before eleven, when most of them walked down to the church.

Marling church was not very old, not very interesting, but several generations of Marlings had been married in it and buried in the churchyard, and they were all calmly attached to it and usually liked the Vicar. As the present incumbent was on holiday Bishop Joram was taking the service for him, which he did very well though, as he afterwards said, he still had nostalgic longings for the black worshippers in his subequatorial diocese and the active absence of Good Form with which they flashed their white teeth, filed to a point, at the more exhilarating passages of the services and rhythmically beat the war-drum (consecrated by his predecessor) to support the harmonium.

The children behaved very well. Mr. Marling grappled satisfactorily with Ezekiel iii, 15 and 1 Corinthians ix, 4, though Lucy afterwards told Mr. Adams that she had distinctly heard him add to the words “Have we not power to eat and drink?” the gloss: “Not under this Government.” By twenty minutes past twelve they were all out in the churchyard and shaking hands with Bishop Joram.

“I have a piece of news for you, Bishop,” said Mrs. Marling, for his friends called him Bishop and Canon indifferently, having become used to him under his former title. “My younger daughter, Lucy, is engaged to Mr. Adams, the M.P. for Barchester. They have known one another for a long time and my husband and I are delighted.”

“My warmest congratulations,” said the Bishop, wringing Lucy’s hand with a vigour equal to her own. He then picked a daisy from the grass, dug his heel into the path, dropped the daisy into the hole and trod it well into the gravel, the whole with a slightly furtive air.

“A relic of the old man in me, I fear,” he said, as Mrs. Marling and Lucy looked at his work. “In Mngangaland no sooner is a betrothal announced than a number of cattle, varying of course with the position and wealth of the bride’s father, are slaughtered and burnt. This custom was deprecated by my predecessor and finally put down during my episcopate, but I always allowed them to perform what I may call a token sacrifice with fruit or vegetables. When I heard your splendid news, Miss Marling, I felt I must follow the example of my black friends, though more in remembrance of their delightful ways than in any heathen spirit of propitiation. You will not think me unduly familiar, I hope,” he added anxiously.

As Lucy was obviously burning to ask the Bishop more about the engagement and marriage rites of his dusty flock, her mother changed the subject by asking him to lunch, an invitation that he accepted enthusiastically.

“Not but what I should be honoured to come in any case,” said Bishop Joram, “but today your kind invitation is as it were a raven in the wilderness, for I must either go back to Barchester and have whatever fare my housekeeper, who has gone out for the day, has seen fit to leave, or I must accept the invitation of a lady, a widow, who lives in the village and whose hospitality I rashly accepted last Sunday. I am not, I hope, a conceited man,” said the Bishop, “but I believe she meant to marry me.”

“Joyce!” said Mrs. Marling.

“Mrs. Smith!” said Lucy, and with one accord they looked towards the vestry, from which came a very thin elderly woman with fine eyes, dressed in what could only be half mourning so were black and purple scarves intertwined about her, carrying a large bunch of flowers, which Lucy had no difficulty in recognizing as the Michaelmas daisies that she had taken up to the church the previous evening.

“Just the widow’s mite,” said the newcomer. “As our dear Bishop is not giving us a second service today, I thought my little good deed should be to take the lovely flowers back to my wee temporary home. They die so soon without water, you know. And may I offer you a little refreshment, Bishop? Only the widow’s cruise, you know; just going round the larder seeing what there is on the shelves with a willing spirit, which is after all half the battle,” said Mrs. Smith, evidently taking the word in question as meaning a roving quest for food rather than a pot or jar. “When Mr. Smith was here, before he passed over I mean, he would often come in quite tired and out of sorts after an evening with his gentlemen business friends and I used to take quite a pleasure in knocking him up a little something.”

Bill Marling said to his wife in a too audible aside that Mr. Smith’s complaint had been D.T. and cirrhosis of the liver and if any knocking up had been done it was old Smith that did it.

“It’s very nice of you, Joyce,” said Mrs. Marling, “but Bishop Joram is an old friend and he is coming to lunch at the Hall. Are your tenants behaving well?”

“Very pleasant people,” said Mrs. Smith. “A Mr. and Mrs. Bissell. He is headmaster of a London school. They go walking a good deal and while they are out I just nip into my little home to see that all is well and take away any little treasure that has beautiful associations for me.”

Mrs. Marling firmly said good-bye to Mrs. Smith.

“A good woman but very tiresome,” she said to Bishop Joram. “She was the infant school teacher here before the war and married a man who had some kind of business; coals, I think. He drank himself into D.T. and luckily to death. She’s all right, but she has a passion for unconsidered trifles and snaps them up like anything. We must consult you about Lucy’s wedding. It won’t be till next year, sometime before Easter. Mr. Adams has no special preference and our church is too small, so we thought the Cathedral, if the Dean approves.”

The Bishop said it would be most appropriate, as Mr. Adams was the Member for Barsetshire, and within the Cathedral walls politics would fade away. And then they got to Marling Hall, where, under the shade of a large tulip tree, Oliver was entertaining Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Clover.

At the sight of the returning churchgoers Jessica opened her lovely eyes to their full extent and in one graceful movement got up from the chaise-longue on which she had been reclining and, speeding fleet-foot towards the Bishop, flung her arms round his neck.

“I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart,” said Oliver, half aloud.

“Yes, but it doesn’t mean anything,” said Aubrey Clover. “You know Jessica.”

“Hokey-pokey!” said Jessica rapturously and then turning to her audience, for so any people who gathered together in one place always became at her approach, added: “Colin Keith brought Bishop Joram to see me after the play last year and I simply adored him and we danced a cancan, didn’t we, my sweet?”

“We did,” said the Canon of Barchester, whose variety of religious experiences had made him very wide-minded. “It was an old song my father used to know in his young days in some musical play, and I always found it had a strong appeal to my friends in Mngangaland. ‘Hokey, pokey, winky, wum,’ I think it ran.”

“ ‘Pitty-bo-peepy, ibly cum,’ ” said Jessica.

“Tonkery, wondery, winkery, wum,

The King of the Cannibal Islands!”

sang both together, with some slight but neat footwork, after which Jessica laughed her infectious laugh and with her husband’s able assistance sank back gracefully onto her chair.

“Lady Hamilton,” said Aubrey Clover, looking with detached interest at his wife.

“Don’t glower, Oliver darling,” said Jessica. “I adore Hokey-Pokey, but he alas adores Lady Graham and Mrs. Brandon and all the middle-aged women with poise and distinction. We must be going, Aubrey, or Mother will have gone to sleep once too often and we shan’t be able to wake her. Lucy, my lamb, I have brought you a heavenly present. I hope it is the first. Just a small rubbish with my love. Where is it, Aubrey?”

From under her chair Aubrey Clover drew a white cardboard box with a well-known name on it.

“Ought I to open it now?” said Lucy.

“Of course, my lamb,” said Jessica. “I want to see your reactions.”

From clouds of tissue paper Lucy drew a Spanish shawl of deepest orange silk with a deep knotted fringe of the shade, embroidered with flowers and birds in brilliant colours.

“Oh!” said Lucy, while the female relations’ eyes nearly came out of their heads and they all wondered, we regret to say, how much it had cost.

“Oh! Jessica!” said Lucy.

“I thought you’d like it,” said Jessica. “I brought two back from New York, never ask me how, one for me and one for the first friend who needed a present. You can wear it any way you like. All slim like this,” and Jessica was swathed in its clinging folds from head to foot like a lovely Tanagra statuette, “or all majestuous like this,” and she became a heavy peasant woman wearing the silk with a kind of ponderous majesty. “We all wear our rue with a difference,” said Jessica with a mocking inflexion that made Oliver uneasy, though why he could not tell, “and I hope you will too, my precious good girl. Now we must fly.”

“Oh, Jessica, couldn’t you be a bridesmaid?” said Lucy, kissing the actress fondly. “You look exactly like one.”

“Oh, I’m a chameleon,” said Jessica. “I mayn’t look like this when you are married. When is it to be?”

Mrs. Marling said next spring.

“Then I certainly shan’t,” said Jessica. “From gold to gold of my girdle, there’ll be an inch between by then. And probably a good deal more.”

Only Mrs. Marling saw Oliver’s face, suddenly stricken to grey stone. Mrs. Bill, whose total indifference to the finer shades was sometimes rather restful, suddenly shrieked: “Oh, Jessica! You’re not going to have a baby! Cheers!”

“I thought I’d feel an awful fool if I didn’t,” said Jessica, who was obviously bursting with pride.

“So did I!” said Aubrey Clover. “I mean for myself as well as Jessica. So it’s to be a girl and we shall call her Sarah Siddons Clover and bring her up in the coulisses, whatever they are.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Mr. Marling, who had been a puzzled spectator of the foregoing scene. “What’s all this? Little Jessica goin’ to have a baby?”

“Yes, if you please, sir,” said Jessica, dropping a curtsy.

“You’re a young baggage,” said Mr. Marling. “Bill! Get some champagne. You know where the key is. We’ve got a few bottles left. Well, Clover, congratulations. I didn’t think you had it in you,” at which unintentional brick the younger members of the party giggled most undutifully and Lucy wondered if Oliver was going to be sick, but somehow didn’t care. She did not wish to explain her feelings to herself, nor do we think she could have done so if she had tried, being quite unselfanalytical. But if we may attempt to explain them for her, we think that she felt her ship had been launched on thrilling uncharted seas and that Jessica Dean, Jessica whom they admired as an actress and thought of as a child, Jessica whom Oliver had loved so foolishly and so long and, one might add, so selfishly and exhaustingly for everyone else, Jessica who was Aubrey Clover’s wife, had embarked with banners flying and trumpets sounding upon the same voyage that Lucy Marling had promised to make. In neither of these voyages would her dear Oliver, though she would always love him and help him, have much share. Too long had his little bark attendant sailed. He must try now to find some other star by which to set his course, and high time too. Nothing would change Lucy’s affection for Oliver, but she suddenly saw him as a great many other people had been seeing him and felt slightly ashamed; not of him, but for him.

While Jessica practised her arts on the company, holding Lettice by one hand and Mrs. Bill by the other, ogling Captain Barclay very prettily, promising the elder children a box for Aubrey’s play in the Christmas holidays, in which (she said) she would be acting the part of an elephant, flirting simultaneously and disgracefully with the Bishop and Mr. Marling, Bill had brought out two large bottles of champagne with glasses, not forgetting the champagne nippers, and everyone, including the older grandchildren, drank to the health of Jessica and Sarah Siddons Clover and then, because Jessica said No Heeltaps to Lucy, or Aunt Lucy, as the case might be, and Mr. Adams.

“I say, Mrs. Clover,” said Mrs. Bill.

“No; please not,” said Jessica. “Say Jessica.”

“Well then Jessica,” said Mrs. Bill, “and my name’s Deirdre but it’s so ghastly nobody says it, let’s drink Lucy’s health and Mr. Adams’s. We did last night, but it wasn’t champagne,” at which betrayal Jessica favoured Mr. Marling with Mrs. Carvel’s famous wink and the health was drunk. Jessica kissed all those present, and Aubrey Clover gave all the children his autograph, said farewell to Mrs. Marling and Lettice with respectful chivalry, to Mrs. Bill with a kiss, which made her bridle and shriek, to Lucy with real avuncular affection, and to all the men with a charming, manly, yet slightly deprecatory handshake that seemed to say: “I know you are better stuff than I am, but I did my best and God bless you.”

Oliver was not visible. But as Aubrey shut the door of his huge road-eating car, a face that felt haggard but was to the outward eye distinctly peevish looked in at the window and said: “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” said Mr. and Mrs. Aubrey Clover with one breath and that a breath of relief, and before Oliver could annoy them any more Aubrey had sounded his siren (specially attached by him to his car to show his American friends what the war was like), the car had apparently leapt six feet into the air and twenty feet forward, and they had vanished down the drive.

It will not surprise our readers to hear that for the rest of the day the conversation at Marling Hall was almost exclusively about Jessica Dean and Aubrey Clover. In fact, of all those who had been present, Mr. and Mrs. Clover if we may so call them were the only people unaffected by their own personalities. They lunched peacefully at Winter Overcotes with Jessica’s father and mother, had tea peacefully at Beliers Priory with the Warings (where Jessica insisted on entering her as yet highly problematical child for Philip Winter’s prep school), ran over to Skeynes to see Mrs. Middleton and get the latest news of her nephew by marriage Denis Stonor, who had promised to do some music for Aubrey Clover’s next production as soon as he had finished his contract with Nat Blumenfelt in New York, and so back to London; a day that would have wrecked most ordinary people, but left Aubrey and Jessica, those strange children of the theatre whose life was most real when it was unreal, no more than pleasantly fatigued and quite ready to go to bed at ten o’clock or to dine late and dance late at the Wigwam. On this particular evening early bed seemed the more agreeable prospect, and so they had a late supper and gossiped about their day. And if any reader is captious enough to ask how they got a late supper, we will explain to such an one that both Jessica and her husband had a genius for getting people to work for them and that Miss Mowbray, mostly known as Miss M., the daughter of a doctor in the East Riding, asked no more of life than to stand between Jessica and the world in every possible way, not to speak of being a first-class cook. As for Aubrey Clover, she tolerated him as the man who wrote (and rehearsed and produced and acted in) the plays that made Miss Jessica Dean the idol of the whole female theatre-going population as well as a large proportion of that much weaker body, the male theatre-goers.

“A pleasant day, I hope,” said Miss M. materializing as soon as Jessica appeared. “And how were the Marlings?”

“Hullo, Miss M., do you know them?” said Aubrey Clover.

“Oh no,” said Miss Mowbray, “but I have so often seen Mr. Oliver Marling here that I feel they are quite old friends.”

“Be an angel and take up my things,” said Jessica, dropping bag, gloves, coat, and various scarves on a table. “We had a heavenly time. Oliver’s father made us drink Sarah Siddons’s health in champagne and Oliver looked too too dim and vengeful, poor lamb.”

“Did he now?” said Miss M., who had always greatly disapproved Oliver’s frequent visits to the flat. “And why, may I ask?”

“I think he has rather a refined mind,” said Jessica sadly, “and we can’t live up to it.”

“Are you crying, my sweet?” said Aubrey Clover.

Jessica was heard to say, indistinctly, that it was soda-water bubbles flying up her nose.

“Well, if you ask me, which you don’t and of course it is no business of mine,” said Miss M., “it’s high time Mr. Marling got married. Hanging round married women is no life for a man. If you want anything else, just call. I shan’t be going to bed for an hour or so,” and she went away.

“Bless her heart,” said Aubrey Clover. “And yours and Sarah Siddons’s. Miss M. is quite right. It’s time Oliver stopped hanging round. He’s too good for that.”

“I’m afraid it’s a bit my fault,” said Jessica. “He looked so miserable always and I had to give him a crumb. He looks like an owl that’s got its feathers wet, poor sweet.”

“Yes, it was your fault,” said Aubrey Clover. “Condoned by your husband, I admit. And as the very thought of Sarah Siddons has scared him, we can go on from there. Was it really soda water?”

“Of course it was,” said Jessica. “Do you think I’d cry for Oliver, poor pet? I’ll be right for acting for quite some time, thank goodness. I suppose Sarah and I will have to go into retirement about February. It all depends on her view of life and the public’s view of me. There’s only one thing that worries me.”

“Tell me,” said Aubrey Clover. “It shan’t worry you, not if I have to act in films with Glamora Tudor to support you.”

“What worries me and Sarah Siddons,” said Jessica, “is how on earth you can get anyone as good as us to act with you.”

“Of all the conceit!” said Aubrey Clover. “I had a kind of mad idea of a two-man show with Denis Stonor. He’ll be over here in the winter and what with my brains and his piano we might make rather a hit.”

At this point both parties began to talk at once. Jessica taking, or rather creating, a very unfair advantage by saying that she was speaking for Sarah Siddons as well as herself. So much noise did they make that Miss M. in a dark-red dressing-gown with a net over her hair-curlers, opened the door and said: “Now that’s enough, Mr. Clover. We must consider ourselves and we need all the sleep we can get. I shall take all the telephone calls till I hear your bell. Good night.”

The news of Lucy’s engagement soon became known to her friends but the formal announcement was postponed by consent of everyone concerned till after Heather Adams’s wedding.

“I see it this way, Heth,” said her father when discussing the matter with her. “You and Ted are going to be married among our own people at Hogglestock and there’ll only be our friends and the people from the works and very nice too and Mother would have been pleased. It’s all in the family as you might say and there’s no one coming that isn’t well known to us except that aunt of Ted’s, who is a sour-faced cat if ever I saw one.”

“She did give me a present, dad,” said Heather, whose happiness made her feel in charity even with aunts-in-law.

“Handkerchief sachet,” said Mr. Adams scornfully, “and bought at a charity bazaar I’ll be bound.”

“No it wasn’t,” said Heather, “because she told Ted she’d had it by her for a long time and thought she’d never get rid of it, and anyway she’s only an aunt by marriage. But you’re right, dad. When Ted and I are back from our honeymoon would be a good time.”

“Right, girlie,” said her father, “and it’s as well you’re going to see a bit of the world, as this lot,” by which we fear that Mr. Adams meant his own party, “aren’t going to make travelling any too easy in the future. I wish I’d seen a bit of Europe myself, but when I was young I hadn’t the cash and now I’m old I don’t feel much like it. If I want to know anything about business in France or Belgium or anywhere, well, I can pay the right man to go and so can old Pilward. I daresay you and Ted will find yourselves spending a couple of years on the continent one of these days. I’ll tell you what, girlie—”

“Now, dad, I won’t have you saying it too,” said Heather. “You’ve caught it from Lucy.”

“So I have,” said Mr. Adams. “She told me off for saying my word was as good as my bond and I told her off for telling everybody what. Well, we’re both old dogs to unlearn old tricks and Lucy is one of the very best.”

As we all know, Mr. Adams’s progress from what we can only call an outsider in a teddy-bear coat and bright yellow driving gauntlets and a violent check suit with cap to match to the not undistinguished-looking man he had become was a good deal due to Mrs. Belton of Harefield, whose kindness to a very sullen, spotty, conceited Heather had won his heart. Under her unobtrusive tuition he had learnt to dress, to speak with assurance among her friends, many of whom had become his friends, and through her quiet and excellent taste he had furnished his house at Edgewood in a way that money alone could not have done. Heather, though younger and less set in her ways than her father, had also benefited in many ways and was devoted to Mrs. Belton, but, luckily for her, her taste had remained very conventional and her refurnishing of the house in Hogglestock was much approved by her future parents-in-law, and if it was not interesting, it kept a decent mean between fumed oak with green hearts inlaid in it and the functional furniture which Mr. Adams privately considered only fit for a board-room, if that.

A few weeks before Heather’s marriage Mr. Adams had asked Mrs. Belton to lunch with him at the County Club, choosing a day when he knew she would be in Barchester for a committee.

“Now, Mrs. Belton,” he said when they were seated at lunch. “I have a great favour to ask you.”

“You have already earned it by choosing what we are to eat,” said Mrs. Belton, “not to speak of drink, which is a treat for me. You can’t think how little a housekeeper wants to decide about her meals when she is taken out for a treat. What is it?”

“Well, it’s Heth’s wedding,” said Mr. Adams. “The Pilwards have a lot of friends hereabouts and we’ve asked them all. Heth and I have some very good friends too, but we haven’t a family. Ted will have his father and mother and two brothers and three sisters and the Lord knows how many cousins and uncles and aunts. I am giving my Heth away, and I suppose I’ll have to arm old Mother Pilward down the aisle afterwards, but I’ll be all alone. I haven’t a single relation I know of in the world unless it may be a cousin of my old dad’s who went to New Zealand and was never heard of again.”

He paused, perhaps to take a breath, perhaps as a tribute to his cousin.

“I think,” said Mrs. Belton, “that I have known you long enough to be allowed to make a suggestion. If you are asking us to the wedding and I know it is to be only personal friends of the bride’s and bridegroom’s families, may I have the pleasure of acting as friend—I won’t say as mother—for Heather?”

Mr. Adams took out a large white handkerchief, finer, so Mrs. Belton noticed with slight envy, than any her husband now possessed, and blew his nose.

“Thank you, Mrs. Belton,” he said. “You’ve been everything kind to me and my Heth ever since she fell into the lake and I accept your offer on behalf of my little Heth—I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything,” said Mrs. Belton. “It is all settled and I shall make it a pretext to buy a new hat. And now, though I believe it is quite against etiquette to do so before the announcement, I want to tell you how very happy we all are about Lucy’s engagement. Amabel Marling told me and she says Lucy is radiantly happy. My love and every good wish to you both, dear Sam.”

She raised her glass and drank.

It was the first time that anyone among his new friends had called the ironmaster anything but Mr. Adams and he reddened as he tried to thank Mrs. Belton. Part of him was deeply flattered and pleased: another part, a part which appeared to him to move and think independently of its owner, had a sneaking feeling that to be called by his Christian name did indeed set the seal of the county’s approval on him, but on the other hand was almost a badge of servitude. And we think he was right. A man may be young, handsome, wealthy, cultivated, charming as Mr. Smith; but from the first moment of his engagement to be married, even if to a duke’s daughter with American dollars in her heritage, he has shown that he is but mortal. The ladies who would have fought, delicately, for his presence in their drawing-rooms, feel without realizing it that being the prey of Venus has somehow dimmed his lustre and may even speak when he is not present of “poor dear Charles.” And if the preceding remarks seem slightly out of date, reflection will show that there is still something in them. The rest of the meal passed in talk about the market garden and the doings of Mrs. Belton’s children and grandchildren.

“I must go now, Mr. Adams,” said Mrs. Belton, looking at the clock on the mantelpiece, which represented in bronze an elephant carrying a howdah, the nearer side of which was a dial, presented by a remote ancestor of Mr. Belton’s, known as the Nabob, who had managed to dissipate most of the considerable fortune he had amassed in India by keeping (in open sin) a very expensive Parisian lady who ran away with the French architect who was building a rococo Chinese pavilion in the grounds, taking with her all the cash and jewels she could lay her hands on. “I really must, or I shall keep our chairman, Lady Pomfret, waiting. We will meet at the wedding, and I will bring my daughter-in-law if I may.”

“Bring anyone you like,” said Mr. Adams, much relieved that his Christian name had been quietly dropped, “and thank you again for my Heth and me. Before you go, I’d like to show you the ring I got for Lucy.”

He pulled a small box from his pocket and showed Mrs. Belton a very fine pale sapphire in an open claw setting.

“I had it set that way so that it’s easy to clean,” said Mr. Adams. “If I know Lucy she’ll cart muck or dig a drain in it. A nice wrought-iron ring would have been more practical but not quite the thing for a bride.”

Mrs. Belton quite truthfully admired the ring, which seemed to her to have the blue of Lucy’s candid eyes, and told Mr. Adams so.

“Just what I thought when I saw it,” said Mr. Adams with pleasure. “I never saw eyes as straight as Lucy’s. Not in the nature of squinting I don’t mean; I mean that girl couldn’t tell a lie if she tried.”

Mrs. Belton said (quite truthfully) that she was sure of it and hurried off to her committee.

We shall not go into any details about Heather Adams’s wedding. Firstly because we hardly know her husband (a very nice, intelligent young man with a good army record) or his family, and secondly because we do not think Mr. Adams would like it. For the better we have got to know him over the last five or six years, the more we have come to respect his fundamental integrity and his power of keeping his own personality, whether in annoying his own party in the House of Commons, defeating business rivals, or keeping his head, his heart, and his place among his newer county friends. Suffice it to say that when Heather and Ted Pilward were married, the church at Hogglestock had never seen a costlier wedding, and, as Mr. Adams had previously foretold, half the works didn’t turn up on time next day owing to pledging the happy pair at Mr. Adams’s expense too deeply and too often.

“Which,” said Mr. Adams to his housekeeper, Miss Hoggett, “didn’t surprise me, because with the stuff my party gives us under the name of beer, you’ll be sick long before you’re sorry. And that,” said Mr. Adams reflectively, “is what most of them were. And now, Miss Hoggett, I’ve a piece of news for you, at least I don’t suppose it will be news, knowing the way things get about, but I should like to tell you myself before it’s in the papers.”

“It’s very kind of you, I’m sure, sir,” said Miss Hoggett, “and if it’s about Miss Marling I’m sure we’ve all been saying for a long time that it really seemed as if it was meant, Miss Marling being your fiancée, now Miss Heather is getting married. May I offer congratulations, sir, for me and Annie and Eileen.”

“Oh, you all knew it, did you?” said Mr. Adams, who had not realized the interest his domestic staff took in his concerns.

“Oh yes, sir,” said Miss Hoggett pityingly. “They say the lookers-on see the most of the game and we’d all like to send our respectful good wishes to Miss Marling. When is it to be, sir?”

Mr. Adams said in the spring and it would be in The Times next week.

“Well now, isn’t that nice, sir?” said Miss Hoggett. “This house does need a lady, if you’ll excuse my saying so, sir.”

A less sensible man might have seen in this remark some slight upon Heather, but Mr. Adams was in most things eminently sensible and, remembering Miss Sowerby’s parting words about the Old Bank House needing a mistress, he felt that he had more than done his duty by it.

Accordingly the Wednesday issue of next week’s Times (and why Wednesday we do not know) contained under “Forthcoming Marriages” the news that a marriage had been arranged and would take place in the early spring between Samuel Adams, M.P. of The Old Bank House, Edgewood, and Lucy Emily, younger daughter of Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. William Marling of Marling Hall, West Barsetshire.

As may be imagined, the county, more especially the western half, was in a perfect uproar of telephonings and rushing into teashops for a good talk, and incidentally wondering (a) what on earth possessed Lucy Marling to marry a man like Mr. Adams and (b) how on earth a man like Mr. Adams came to think of a girl like Lucy Marling. Mr. Adams, with sound business acumen, had transferred himself for the time being to his flat in London, where he was attending to his Parliamentary duties, and his competent and reliable secretary, Miss Pickthorn, was enjoying herself rapturously as call after call came through on the office telephone; some from friends sincerely “wanting to know,” though more benevolently than Miss Rosa Dartle; some from people who felt that their position made it reasonable, nay necessary, for them to be impertinent. Among the latter our readers will be glad to hear was the Dowager Lady Norton, well known to all her acquaintances as the Dreadful Dowager.

“The Hogglestock Iron Works speaking,” said Miss Pickthorn. “Victoria, Lady Norton? Yes, Lady Norton, it is Mr. Adams’s secretary speaking.”

“I want Mr. Adams himself,” said the voice of Lady Norton.

“Mr. Adams is in London. Can I take a message?” said Miss Pickthorn, who then put her hand over the mouthpiece and said to Miss Cowshay, formerly of the cash desk at Pilchard’s Stores, then in charge of the teleprinter in the Regional Commissioner’s Office in Barchester and now second-in-command of the works costing department, that if she listened in on the extension she’d hear something.

“No,” said her ladyship. “I must speak to Mr. Adams myself.”

“I’m sorry, Lady Norton, but Mr. Adams is in London,” said Miss Pickthorn. “I could take a message for him.”

“You can give me his London number,” said Lady Norton. “I do not at all understand this engagement and wish to speak to Mr. Adams myself.”

“I’m sorry we are not allowed to give his London number,” said Miss Pickthorn.

The silence that followed was extremely enjoyable not only to the two ladies but to Mr. Evans, the production manager, who had come in, he said, to get that file.

“I don’t know who it is speaking to me,” said Lady Norton’s voice. “I wish to speak personally to Mr. Adams. I cannot understand this engagement at all. It is outrageous.”

“It is Mr. Adams’s secretary speaking,” said Miss Pickthorn, who was always admirably unmoved by rudeness on the telephone, and just as well.

“I do not care who it is,” said Lady Norton. “Whoever you are I shall report you for insolence.”

“It is Mr. Adams’ secretary,” said Miss Pickthorn, on the verge of giggles.

The audience held its breath in joyful expectation of Lady Norton’s rejoinder, when the words: “You can’t talk like that to people, Moggs. Give me the thing for a minute,” were heard, followed by a kind of scuffle, after which another woman’s voice said: “Sorry, but my mother-in-law’s a terror on the telephone. What does she want? Well, of course if you aren’t allowed to give it, you can’t. I’ll tell her to write to him at the House of Commons. Good-bye.”

The idea of the Dreadful Dowager’s pet name being Moggs made everyone laugh so much that Mr. Evans forgot what he had come for and was just going away when he stopped and said: “Oh, that file.”

“Which is it, Mr. Evans?” said Miss Cowshay. “The York and Ripon Ecclesiastical Metal Works, or Amalgamated Vedge about those mechanical bean-slicers?”

“No, no,” said Mr. Evans impatiently. “My file.”

“Ow, if I hadn’t forgotten all about it,” said Miss Cowshay, at the same time turning the contents of her handbag out onto the table. “Mr. Evans lent it me because there’s a screw loose on the lock of the stationery cupboard. Here you are, Mr. Evans. I managed ever so well.”

“I am thinking,” said Mr. Evans, “—pardon me, ladies, but it’s a split fingernail and really the agony if it catches in anything is what they call exquisite—of writing a little handy volume on ‘Things you can use as other things.’ There’s quite a lot of things like that.”

“That’s right,” said Miss Cowshay. “If my brother’s beaten my young nephew once for using his chisel as a screw-driver, he’s beaten him fifty times. ‘It’s no good, Bob,’ I said to my brother, ‘your beating that child. You wouldn’t check him when he was a kid and now you’re getting what you asked for and that lad will never make a good tradesman. A Government office is all he’s fit for,’ I said,” at which interesting anecdote her audience, who were well educated and gave the word “tradesman” its right value, expressed their applause.

“No, what I was thinking of,” said Mr. Evans, putting the nail-file back in his waistcoat pocket, “was things like using a safety-pin when you haven’t got a bodkin, or one of those bookstraps that the more you pull them back on the buckle the tighter they hold—”

Miss Pickthorn said did he mean one of those ones made of a sort of browny-orangy-reddy stuff rather like very weak braces, only the worst of them was you couldn’t make a handle and had to dangle the livery books or carry them under your arm, in which case string would have done as well.

“—the tighter they hold,” repeated Mr. Evans in an almost savage way, “for a belt, if you happen not to be wearing braces and haven’t got such a thing as a belt about you.”

Ignoring this indelicate subject Miss Pickthorn said they must get up a subscription for Mr. Adams’s wedding and it had better be done soon, because if past experience was anything to go by they’d have spent everything they’d got by Christmas Eve, not to speak of all these National Health contributions and what not. All present agreed and the party broke up. And we may say that although at least seven minutes had been spent in conversation all three, being heads in their own particular branch, remained in the office till everything was done.

From now onwards presents and congratulations began to pour in at Marling Hall. Lucy, who was always busy out of doors from dawn to dusk, began to feel almost afraid of the accumulating pile of correspondence and at last confessed this to her mother. Mrs. Marling, who had not for years attempted in any way to control her masterful daughter, was touched by her child’s appeal and gave her very sensible mind to the question. What was needed was a temporary secretary, someone who could (if anyone could) stop Lucy tearing open her parcels and overlooking or mislaying the contents, keep an eye on letters containing cheques, two of which had after an hour’s very unpleasant search been rescued from the paper dump, which the West Barsetshire County Council collected every week, docket the congratulations and perhaps take over some of the secretarial part of Mrs. Marling’s county work so that she might have time to thrust the question of a trousseau upon her unwilling daughter. On this difficulty she decided to open her heart to her cousin Lady Graham, who had come over from Little Misfit to have tea and a gossip.

“Darling Amabel,” said Lady Graham, “I can’t tell you how happy Robert is about the news. He has never really met Mr. Adams, but he has several friends in Parliament who know him and speak very highly of him. He sends you his love and simply longs to come to the wedding, but you know how difficult it is for him to get away.” To which Mrs. Marling with a sense of humour that she rarely showed replied that it was not yet settled and would probably not be till the early spring.

“Robert says,” said Agnes Graham, whose sentences were very apt to begin with these words, “that he would like to give Lucy a pig for a wedding present if she is going to have them when she is married.”

There was a small pause while Mrs. Marling considered the offer and Agnes too appeared to do a little thinking, for she added: “Of course Robert’s Holdings Goliath did only get second prize at the Barchester Agricultural, and William’s pig was first, but our cowman Goble says our sows are wonderful breeders, and Robert has a fine young one.”

These words from Lady Graham, who always looked and mostly spoke as if her mind could not entertain anything heavier than swan’s-down or caramel soufflé, might have surprised her many admirers, including Bishop Joram, but as Mr. Marling had said, more than once, Agnes might look like a Pompadour but she had uncommon good horse sense. And though the comparison was a poor one he was quite right in his recognition of the sound bottom of common sense in her.

“It is extremely generous of Robert,” said Mrs. Marling, for to offer a sire (we speak in a general way) may be generous, but to offer a dam (or in this case a sow) is princely. Even as the Arabs jealously guarded their mares, mares about whom noble poetry has been written, so do pig-breeders guard their sows, and this offer of Sir Robert Graham’s was flattering, for it showed not only his goodwill to his wife’s young cousin, but also his appreciation of Mr. Adams as a citizen, for as a private individual he had barely met him. “It is really most kind of him, Agnes. I will ask Lucy what her pig plans are, but it is really difficult to get a moment alone with her. She insists on going on with her work for Mr. Adams and she works very hard here and really I sometimes wonder how she will find time to get married. Come and look in the old drawing-room, Agnes.”

She took Lady Graham to the large drawing-room with its handsome cornice and panelling, its long line of French windows on three sides, which had not been used since 1945. The family had taken over a large bedroom as their living-room, and a very pleasant room it made, and the drawing room had been used for Red Cross stores and was still stacked with hospital supplies. One end of the room had been cleared and here, on the old dining-room table with all its leaves in it, were Lucy’s wedding presents in most unadmired disorder.

“You see, Agnes,” said Mrs. Marling.

“Oh dear,” said Agnes in her soft voice. “How very upsetting! You must feel quite worried.”

“I do,” said Mrs. Marling. “If I knew a nice woman who would come here and help with letters and telephoning and keep things tidy, I would be thankful. Really I could do with a secretary for several months, as I must take Lucy to London for clothes whether she likes it or not, and I can’t do the wedding single-handed. We are thinking of the Cathedral as our church is so tiny. Only then I don’t know what to do about the reception. Lady Fielding was lucky when Anne was married because she lives in the Close and people could walk across. You are so practical, Agnes. Do think of something.”

Although practical was the last word anyone would have thought of applying to Lady Graham, those who really knew her, and they were not very many although her admirers and acquaintances were legion, would have heartily concurred in it. Her appealing charm covered a good deal of the Pomfret masterfulness and the Leslie common sense; she was an excellent judge of people, could manage servants and children, and never appeared ruffled whatever happened. Her husband consulted her about most things and as often as not followed her advice, although we sometimes wonder if he was conscious of it.

“Darling Amabel, it is quite dreadful,” said Agnes, her dove’s eyes darkening with distressed sympathy. “How I wish I could think of someone. Someone like Merry,” said Lady Graham, alluding to the invaluable Miss Merriman, who had been secretary to old Lady Pomfret and then guide, philosopher and friend to Lady Emily in her last years, “but she promised to go to Sally Pomfret after mamma died.”

Mrs. Marling’s heart, which had risen a little, sank back with a dull thud.

“Have you heard about Sally?” said Agnes.

Mrs. Marling said not in particular. What was it, she asked.

“You know poor Gillie is never very well and he will overwork himself in the Lords, besides killing himself in the county,” said Agnes. “So Sally got the bit between her teeth and she is taking the whole family to the villa at Cap Ferrat for the winter, and Merry is to go with them. We all think it an excellent plan. Sally has been most sensible, and if Mellings doesn’t go to his prep school till Easter it doesn’t matter at his age. He is one mass of nerves, poor darling, but Sally says he has been much better since she found he was frightened of riding, thanks to Eleanor Grantly, that nice girl who was her secretary at the Hospital Libraries. And that,” said Agnes, her gentle voice becoming almost animated, “reminds me.”

“What of?” said Mrs. Marling, as Agnes appeared to have got to the end of her sentence.

“I don’t want to raise your hopes,” said Agnes, “but there have been some disagreeable differences at the Hospital Libraries and Sally is resigning for six months at any rate and I hope for ever, and that nice girl Isabel Dale who was in the secretary’s office is resigning too. I wonder.”

“Who is taking over then?” said Mrs. Marling, more interested for the moment in the St. John and Red Cross Hospital Libraries’ difficulties than her own.

“Eleanor Norton,” said Agnes. “She will do very well I think. Robert says that anyone who can call old Lady Norton Moggs and alter the drawing-room furniture at Norton Hall can run the Libraries with one finger. Sally told me that Eleanor Norton had a talk with Isabel Dale and they agreed in quite a nice way that they would both rather work with someone else. Would you like me to find out? I wish darling Clarissa could help you, but she is at college, which is too too sad, and will be there for two more years. But luckily they have very long holidays and perhaps she will grow out of it,” said her ladyship, who appeared to think of a university education as a form of measles, catching but not dangerous.

Mrs. Marling sympathized about Clarissa and asked Agnes to find out more about Isabel Dale, and then Agnes went away.