As if thoughts of Mrs. Meredith reminded him of something else, the
rector took from the drawer of his writing table a letter received the
previous day, and, opening to the second page, read again as follows: "Are you going anywhere this summer? Of course not, for so long
as there is an unbaptized child, or a bed-ridden old woman in the
parish, you must stay at home, even if you do grow as rusty as
did Professor Cobden's coat before we boys made him a present of
a new one. I say, Arthur, there was a capital fellow spoiled when
you took to the ministry, with your splendid talents, and rare
gift for making people like and believe in you.
"Now, I suppose you will reply that for this denial of self you
look for your reward in heaven, and I suppose you are right; but
as I have no reason to think I have any stock in that region, I
go in for a good time here, and this summer I take it at
Saratoga, where I expect to meet one of your lambs. I hear you
have in your flock forty in all, their ages varying from fifteen
to fifty. But this particular lamb, Miss Anna Ruthven, is, I
fancy, the fairest of them all, and as I used to make you my
father confessor in the days when I was rusticated out in
Winsted, and fell so desperately in love with the six Miss
Larkins, each old enough to be my mother, so now I confide to you
the programme as marked out by Mrs. Julia Meredith, the general
who brings the lovely Anna into the field.
"We, that is, Mrs. Meredith and myself, are on the best of
terms. I lunch with her, dine with her, lounge in her parlors,
drive her to the park, take her to the operas, concerts and
plays, and compliment her good looks, which are wonderfully well
preserved for a woman of forty-five. I am twenty-six, you know,
and so no one ever associates us together in any kind of gossip.
She is the very quintessence of fashion, and I am one of the
danglers whose own light is made brighter by the reflection of
her rays. Do you see the point? Well, then, in return for my
attentions, she takes a very sisterly interest in my future wife,
and has adroitly managed to let me know of her niece, a certain
Anna Ruthven, who, inasmuch as I am tired of city belles, will
undoubtedly suit my fancy, said Anna being very fresh, very
artless, and very beautiful withal. She is also niece to Mrs.
Meredith, whose only brother married very far beneath him, when
he took to wife the daughter of a certain old-fashioned Captain
Humphreys, a pillar, no doubt, in your church. This young Ruthven
was drowned, or hung, or something, and the sister considers it
as another proof of his wife's lack of refinement and discretion
that at her death, which happened when Anna was three years old,
she left her child to the charge of her own parents, Captain
Humphreys and spouse, rather than to Mrs. Meredith's care, and
that, too, in the very face of the lady's having stood as sponsor
for the infant, an act which you will acknowledge was very
unnatural and ungrateful in Mrs. Ruthven, to say the least of it.