CHAPTER IVThe great advantage of being a bachelor, as Mr. Oriel was apt to say complacently, is that you can ask people to dinner without worrying. This general axiom was such a fallacy as left all his hearers indignant or gasping, according to their nature. But fate had so far been kind to the Vicar of Harefield that his bachelor life had been sheltered throughout. He had lived as a young clergyman in great harmony with his mother and elder sister. When his mother died his sister had continued to keep house for him with the assistance of two maids and an excellent cook. His sister had died just before the war, bequeathing him to Mrs. Powlett the cook. Mr. Oriel had mourned his sister most sincerely, but had long become reconciled to her loss. Mrs. Powlett, daughter of a sexton and widow o
