Luke's, Kensingate, to the immoderately rural
parish of St. Chuddocks, somewhere in Yondershire. There were doubtless
substantial advantages connected with the move, but there were certainly
some very obvious drawbacks. Neither the migratory clergyman nor his
wife were able to adapt themselves naturally and comfortably to the
conditions of country life. Beryl, Mrs. Gaspilton, had always looked
indulgently on the country as a place where people of irreproachable
income and hospitable instincts cultivated tennis-lawns and rose-gardens
and Jacobean pleasaunces, wherein selected gatherings of interested week-
end guests might disport themselves. Mrs. Gaspilton considered herself
as distinctly an interesting personality, and from a limited standpoint
she was doubtless right. She had indolent dark eyes and a comfortable
chin, which belied the slightly plaintive inflection which she threw into
her voice at suitable intervals. She was tolerably well satisfied with
the smaller advantages of life, but she regretted that Fate had not seen
its way to reserve for her some of the ampler successes for which she
felt herself well qualified. She would have liked to be the centre of a
literary, slightly political salon, where discerning satellites might
have recognised the breadth of her outlook on human affairs and the
undoubted smallness of her feet.
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