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Do not think, that I am slack in coming for to reap.

“Post for you, Mrs. Barstow,” announced the maid as the family sat at breakfast.

“Thank you, Reed,” answered Mrs. Barstow, indicating where it might be placed beside her dish.

“Pardon me, Mrs. Gordon Barstow, but I meant for Mrs. Sebastian Barstow.”

That got everyone’s attention, for no Barstow could remember Sarah receiving any letters, she having no family outside of them.

While little Bash instantly bounced in his chair, holding out a plump hand and demanding, “I see! I see it, Mama,” the others did their best to feign indifference.

This courtesy lasted throughout the time she spent frowning over the direction and the design of the seal but was abandoned at once when, upon finally unfolding the sheet and glancing at the signature, Sarah gave a loud gasp.

“What is it?” cried Frances and Maria in unison, while Mrs. Barstow said, “Is it bad news, my dear?”

But Sarah had embarrassingly choked, and it took her some moments to stifle her coughs and recover the power of speech, by which time the others were tempted to snatch the correspondence from her.

And surely it was discomfiture at her outburst which caused scarlet to wash over her as she read, pressing a napkin to her mouth.

At last, however, she lay the napkin aside and looked up.

“It is—an old naval comrade of Sebastian’s,” she rasped. “Ahem. He—er—writes to say he will come to Iffley this week to call.”

“Now?” marveled Mrs. Barstow. “Who can it be? Sebastian has been gone over two years.”

“He must have been too busy fighting to come before,” suggested Gordon, picturing broadsides, ships on fire, blasted masts with their rigging tangled, and everywhere wounded men lying about, moaning.

“That can’t have been,” said Maria, with the scorn only a slightly older sister could heap upon a younger brother, “because we’ve been at peace for months and months now.”

“He was a prisoner of war,” explained Sarah, the color only now beginning to recede from her face. “So he says it took some time for him to be released by his captors and returned and paid off. But now he comes.”

“Hurrah!” shouted Gordon. “A naval man coming to call! Hurrah!”

Bash at once took up the cheer, beating his spoon upon the table.

When order was restored, Mrs. Barstow repeated her question in a trembling voice. Because—a friend of her son’s! What might he share with them of Sebastian?

Sarah’s eyes briefly met those of Frances. It was a warning, lest Frances screech or jump or blurt something regrettable when she learned the name.

“It’s a fellow officer from the Penelope, madam,” she answered her mother-in-law. “You will surely remember the name from Sebastian’s letters when I tell you. One Horace Langworthy.”

“Of course I remember that name,” breathed Mrs. Barstow in delight, entirely failing to notice Frances clapping a hand to her mouth.

(It need not be stated here that, however much Sebastian Barstow had softened his stories when writing to his wife, he did so even more when writing to his mother.) “Does Mr. Langworthy say how far he is coming from? Surely he must intend to stay in Iffley or in Oxford for a few days, at least. I hope he will! For a mere fifteen-minute call will never suffice. Yes—perhaps he could be persuaded to pass a week in Iffley. Lord Dere had always said surplus visitors who could not be accommodated at the cottage were welcome at Perryfield—”

To Sarah’s relief, the clamor of the children’s suggestions provided time for her to collect herself, though she wished she might have done so without Frances observing her.

Heaven help her! Had she somehow summoned Horace Langworthy by the power of thought?

A case of “talk of the Devil, and he's presently at your elbow”? What could he possibly have to say to her—to any of them? Stories of Sebastian, most likely, but were they likely to be stories the children or Sebastian’s mother should hear?

Well, Sarah sighed inwardly, whatever the reason bringing the dreadful man down upon them, at least she had a week to prepare.

But even as she thought this, some sixty miles away in London, a stocky man stumbled over a trunk in a passageway and hurtled through an open door.

“What the deuce?” cried the room’s occupant Horace Langworthy, as he stood at the washstand shaving. He eyed the intruder, taking in the man’s downy white hair, luxuriant whiskers and sober attire. “You’re not Conklin. Have you mistaken your way, sir?”

“Mistaken my way? Indeed not,” blustered the whiskered man.

Struggling to his feet he straightened his black coat and dusted off his knees.

“I tripped over your luggage in the passage—luggage most inconveniently placed, I might add—and fell. If you object to receiving unexpected visitors in this manner, I suggest you move your trunk to one side and shut your door firmly.”

Langworthy’s half-lathered face cracked in a grin, which would have further stoked the priest’s indignation, had it not been followed with an affable “We share a common enemy, then, my good sir: Conklin, the inn servant, who has proven sadly deficient though I tipped him respectably. To add insult to injury, whatever is obstructing the passage does not belong to me, as you see my trunk here.” He nodded toward where it lay still open.

“Nor have these latest bungles of his been solitary examples. But if it comforts you, I will not be in your hair much longer, for I take the Oxford coach within the hour.”

“You’re going to Oxford!” The whiskered man straightened to study him, while Langworthy proceeded to slap water on his clean-shaven face and then to rub it vigorously with the greying, frayed inn towel.

Though it was midwinter and his sunburn mostly faded, yet enough of his former ruddy bronze remained to make the clergyman appear pale as paste, and the latter soon ventured, “But you’re a navy man, aren’t you? ”

Langworthy threw the towel aside. “I am. Do I still look so weatherbeaten?”

With a plump finger, the parson indicated the uniform coat, neatly brushed and buttons gleaming, draped over the trunk lid.

“I’ve seen many paid-off sailors with the peace, but you are the first who is headed for Oxford, as I am.

Clerics such as myself go there by the score, of course, but sailors… Do you hail from there, originally?”

“Not a bit. Can’t you hear my accent? In Sussex we don’t prance and bleat like you Oxford sorts.” But he removed the barb from the jibe with a wink. “I stray so far from shore because I have a duty to discharge to a fellow sailor, whose widow now resides in Iffley.”

“Iffley!” echoed the parson, his whiskers quivering in amazement.

“Why that is precisely my destination! If you will allow me to introduce myself, I am Dr. Septimus Rearden, and I go to take up the duties of an old Oxford colleague who is in Italy now for his health. I am fortunate in having appointments which obviate the need for a living of my own, leaving me free to do little favors such as these.”

“Honored to make your acquaintance,” replied Langworthy with a bow and a twist of his lips.

“Mr. Horace Langworthy at your service.” A note of self-mockery tinged this declaration, which Rearden could not interpret, but which other navy men would have understood.

To wit, while captains might be given their rank even when limping along onshore at half pay, lowlier lieutenants dwindled once more into mere “misters.”

“Will the discharging of your ‘duty’ keep you long in Iffley, Mr. Langworthy?”

A pang rippled through the sailor at this, and he shifted restlessly before giving the question the go-by. “Hard to say. Will yours, Dr. Rearden?”

“I expect to be there at least through the summer. Terry and his wife will not want to exchange the mellow glory of Rome for our wet, dank springtime, and then it will take them some weeks to return, if they choose to return.”

With a mechanical clearing of its throat, the mantel clock arthritically chimed the half hour, and Langworthy began to gather his remaining belongings, tossing them into a gaping valise. “Well, let us hope it stays dry for our journey at least, for I’m up top.”

Where nine out of ten men would have excused themselves at that point and withdrawn from the room, Dr. Septimus Rearden proved the tenth man.

In truth, having been widowed twenty years earlier, and being childless and of no interest to his remaining youthful relations, he seized upon this encounter with the younger man.

In place of hours of silence, confined to the coach with a variety of mismatched companions, he pictured a cozy chat with a social equal.

Doubtless Mr. Langworthy had a store of stimulating experiences to share, and perhaps he would ask questions in turn, which Rearden would be happy to answer.

His heart beat faster just imagining it.

What if, instead of arriving in Iffley travel-stained and alone, he descended with a spring in his step and a new friend in his pocket?

Emboldened, Rearden tugged on his side whiskers and advanced a step. “Up top, you say? Ah, I could never travel so, for my balance is not what it was, and I fear I would doze and tumble off. But I suppose you navy men are indifferent to peril.”

“Let us say my pocketbook is indifferent to it,” said Langworthy dryly, fastening the straps of his valise.

“Right, right,” agreed the parson to himself.

“Half pay, after all. Say—as we will both be residents of Iffley for whatever length of time, what would you think, Mr. Langworthy, of taking a seat within the vehicle for the journey? That is, I would consider it a great service to me in whiling away the hours and would therefore insist on treating you. Your only duties would be to stay awake and indulge an old man with some conversation.”