The Argosy — page 257: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

242 Valentine’s Day. worth the surrender of a few of my special self-indulgences. I should be a better and a happier man. Besides,” he thought, with a touch of selfishness on the other side of his argument, ‘‘she could do that horrid visiting: I absolutely dare not. I should resent anybody coming here and telling me I was leading a wretched and godless life. Why should anybody else be better pleased if I drop in at their cottage, and tellthem so? Women do that kind of thing much better than we do.” Thus the result of Miss Kate’s valentine was that, for his own good and the good of his parish, the Rev. Paul Vyner decided to take unto himself a wife. During the afternoon of Valentine’s Day, Miss Grey started out for a walk, and we blush to state that she stopped the first rustic she met, and asked the way to the Vicarage. ‘‘ It will amuse me to see him, and please him to see me,” ruminated the young lady. ‘‘ And after all, where is the harm so long as we understand each other?” With which very stale apology for flirtation she comforted herself, and strolled on until she came to the Vicarage. The house, a handsome, old, red-brick building, stood in extensive grounds surrounded bya high fence. On one side, between this fence and the adjoining fields, ran a narrow lane, and down this lane Kate made her way, trying to persuade herself that she went there because it was pretty, and a likely spot to find primroses, and not because it was now possible for her to see into and be seen from the Vicarage grounds, ; So she dawdled listlessly down the lane, half-amused and half- angry with her own folly; at one minute wishing to see Trevor, at another, hoping she should not; poking the end of her parasol into the banks as she passed, with a vague sort of idea that that was a recognised way of hunting for wild flowers. Suddenly she was brought to a full-stop by a voice right above her, enquiring if she was looking for anything. Kate turned her eyes up, and mentally decided that she had seldom seen a handsomer man than the one now leaning over the hedge, and in whose eyes she was quick to detect no little admiration of herself. And certainly the Parson in his lawn-tennis costume was a goodly sight. Six feet high, long in the leg, broad in the shoulder, and flat in the back, his loose flannel attire displayed as much as his di- lapidated clericals concealed his personal advantages. His handsome, clean-shaved face, glowing with exercise, small head, and closely- cropped dark curls, surmounted by a shooting-cap, which he had pushed back as far as was compatible with its remaining, on his head at all, formed a tout ensemble that was undeniably pleasant. But before going any further, let us just account for the Vicar’s presence and his pupil’s absence, After lunch Mr, Vyner had suggested a game of tennis, Both Eomichooks.¢co m