John shall come for you at nine o'clock with (the moon is not up then) the lantern."
Leaning on his daughter's willing arm, the good old man then rose and walked homeward; and so soon as she had wheeled round his easy-chair, placed the backgammon board on the table, and wished the old gentleman an easy victory over his expected antagonist, the apothecary, Lucy tied down her bonnet, and took her way to the rectory.
When she arrived at the clerical mansion and entered the drawing-room, she was surprised to find the parson's wife, a good, homely, lethargic old lady, run up to her, seemingly in a state of great nervous agitation and crying,--
"Oh, my dear Miss Brandon! which way did you come? Did you meet nobody by the road? Oh, I am so frightened! Such an accident to poor dear Dr. Slopperton! Stopped in the king's highway, robbed of some tithe-money he had just received from Farmer Slowforth! If it had not been for that dear angel, good young man, God only knows whether I might not have been a disconsolate widow by this time!"
While the affectionate matron was thus running on, Lucy's eye glancing round the room discovered in an armchair the round and oily little person of Dr. Slopperton, with a countenance from which all the carnation hues, save in one circular excrescence on the nasal member, that was left, like the last rose of summer, blooming alone, were faded into an aspect of miserable pallor. The little man tried to conjure up a smile while his wife was narrating his misfortune, and to mutter forth some syllable of unconcern; but he looked, for all his bravado, so exceedingly scared that Lucy would, despite herself, have laughed outright, had not her eye rested upon the figure of a young man who had been seated beside the reverend gentleman, but who had risen at Lucy's entrance, and who now stood gazing upon her intently, but with an air of great respect. Blushing deeply and involuntarily, she turned her eyes hastily away, and approaching the good doctor, made her inquiries into the present state of his nerves, in a graver tone than she had a minute before imagined it possible that she should have been enabled to command.
"Ah! my good young lady," said the doctor, squeezing her hand, "I--may, I may say the church--for am I not its minister? was in imminent danger-- but this excellent gentleman prevented the sacrilege, at least in great measure. I only lost some of my dues,--my rightful dues,--for which I console myself with thinking that the infamous and abandoned villain will suffer hereafter."
"There cannot be the least doubt of that," said the young man. "Had he only robbed the mail-coach, or broken into a gentleman's house, the offence might have been expiable; but to rob a clergyman, and a rector too!--Oh, the sacrilegious dog!"
"Your warmth does you honour, sir," said the doctor, beginning now to recover; "and I am very proud to have made the acquaintance of a gentleman of such truly religious opinions."
"Ah!" cried the stranger, "my foible, sir,--if I may so speak,--is a sort of enthusiastic fervour for the Protestant Establishment. Nay, sir, I never come across the very nave of the church without feeling an indescribable emotion--a kind of sympathy, as it were--with--with--you understand me, sir--I fear I express myself ill."
"Not at all, not at all!" exclaimed the doctor: "such sentiments are uncommon in one so young."
"Sir, I learned them early in life from a friend and preceptor of mine, Mr. MacGrawler, and I trust they may continue with me to my dying day."
Here the doctor's servant entered with (we borrow a phrase from the novel of ----------) "the tea-equipage;" and Mrs. Slopperton, betaking herself to its superintendence, inquired with more composure than hitherto had belonged to her demeanour, what sort of a looking creature the ruffian was.
"I will tell you, my dear, I will tell you, Miss Lucy, all about it. I was walking home from Mr. Slowforth's, with his money in my pocket, thinking, my love, of buying you that topaz cross you wished to have."
"Dear, good man!" cried Mrs. Slopperton; "what a fiend it must have been to rob so excellent a creature!"
"And," resumed the doctor, "it also occurred to me that the Madeira was nearly out,--the Madeira, I mean, with the red seal; and I was thinking it might not be amiss to devote part of the money to buy six dozen more; and the remainder, my love, which would be about one pound eighteen, I thought I would divide--'for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord!'--among the thirty poor families on the common; that is, if they behaved well, and the apples in the back garden were not feloniously abstracted!"
"Excellent, charitable man!" ejaculated Mrs. Slopperton. "While I was thus meditating, I lifted my eyes, and saw before me two men,--one of prodigious height, and with a great profusion of hair about his shoulders; the other was smaller, and wore his hat slouched over his face: it was a very large hat. My attention was arrested by the singularity of the tall person's hair, and while I was smiling at its luxuriance, I heard him say to his companion, 'Well, Augustus, as you are such a moral dog, he is in your line, not mine; so I leave him to you.' Little did I think those words related to me.