He thought of the gossip that had reached
him from the Nuns' House, to the effect that Helena, whom he had
mistrusted as so proud and fierce, submitted herself to the fairy-
bride (as he called her), and learnt from her what she knew. He
thought of the picturesque alliance between those two, externally
so very different. He thought--perhaps most of all--could it be
that these things were yet but so many weeks old, and had become an
integral part of his life?
As, whenever the Reverend Septimus fell a-musing, his good mother
took it to be an infallible sign that he 'wanted support,' the
blooming old lady made all haste to the dining-room closet, to
produce from it the support embodied in a glass of Constantia and a
home-made biscuit. It was a most wonderful closet, worthy of
Cloisterham and of Minor Canon Corner. Above it, a portrait of
Handel in a flowing wig beamed down at the spectator, with a
knowing air of being up to the contents of the closet, and a
musical air of intending to combine all its harmonies in one
delicious fugue. No common closet with a vulgar door on hinges,
openable all at once, and leaving nothing to be disclosed by
degrees, this rare closet had a lock in mid-air, where two
perpendicular slides met; the one falling down, and the other
pushing up. The upper slide, on being pulled down (leaving the
lower a double mystery), revealed deep shelves of pickle-jars, jam-
pots, tin canisters, spice-boxes, and agreeably outlandish vessels
of blue and white, the luscious lodgings of preserved tamarinds and
ginger.
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