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.