The Woodlanders

Fitzpiers did not talk much longer to this cheering housewife, and

walked home with no very brisk step. He entered the door quietly, and

went straight up-stairs to the drawing-room extemporized for their use

by Melbury in his and his bride's absence, expecting to find her there

as he had left her. The fire was burning still, but there were no

lights. He looked into the next apartment, fitted up as a little

dining-room, but no supper was laid. He went to the top of the stairs,

and heard a chorus of voices in the timber-merchant's parlor below,

Grace's being occasionally intermingled.

Descending, and looking into the room from the door-way, he found quite

a large gathering of neighbors and other acquaintances, praising and

congratulating Mrs. Fitzpiers on her return, among them being the

dairyman, Farmer Bawtree, and the master-blacksmith from Great Hintock;

also the cooper, the hollow-turner, the exciseman, and some others,

with their wives, who lived hard by. Grace, girl that she was, had

quite forgotten her new dignity and her husband's; she was in the midst

of them, blushing, and receiving their compliments with all the

pleasure of old-comradeship.

Fitzpiers experienced a profound distaste for the situation. Melbury

was nowhere in the room, but Melbury's wife, perceiving the doctor,

came to him. "We thought, Grace and I," she said, "that as they have

called, hearing you were come, we could do no less than ask them to

supper; and then Grace proposed that we should all sup together, as it

is the first night of your return."

By this time Grace had come round to him. "Is it not good of them to

welcome me so warmly?" she exclaimed, with tears of friendship in her

eyes. "After so much good feeling I could not think of our shutting

ourselves up away from them in our own dining-room."

"Certainly not--certainly not," said Fitzpiers; and he entered the room

with the heroic smile of a martyr.

As soon as they sat down to table Melbury came in, and seemed to see at

once that Fitzpiers would much rather have received no such

demonstrative reception. He thereupon privately chid his wife for her

forwardness in the matter. Mrs. Melbury declared that it was as much

Grace's doing as hers, after which there was no more to be said by that

young woman's tender father. By this time Fitzpiers was making the

best of his position among the wide-elbowed and genial company who sat

eating and drinking and laughing and joking around him; and getting

warmed himself by the good cheer, was obliged to admit that, after all,

the supper was not the least enjoyable he had ever known.