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The mention of Canon Banister and the Dean's wife, both old Barchester friends, made the whole affair seem much more possible. Jane took the address, thanked Mr. Pattern and, for much time had gone in shops and at the house agent's, had to hurry to the Rectory to fetch Frank home to lunch. This was not really necessary, for Frank had taken himself to and from school unaccompanied since he was quite small, but it was a pleasant diversion for her before lunch, and as Frank had not yet reached the stage of being ashamed of her, she profited by his tolerance.

Hallbury Rectory was a modern building by Hallbury standards, certainly not earlier than 1688. The original Rectory, which stood on the north side of the church and almost against it, naturally got no sun from the south. Owing to a thick screen of clerical vegetation such as dark conifers, ilex, a kind of cypress and high laurel hedges, it got little or no light from the east or west, and on the north looked across a wall on to a large barn. As there was also a well in the cellar, fed mostly by the town drainage, the incumbents and their wives and families had died off like flies until a lucky fire one Guy Fawkes Day had reduced it to a blackened shell. The Rectory was then moved to a commodious brick and stone house and produced quantities of valuable children, among whom was the Augustus Palliser who had served under Lord Howe and bought Hallbury House. As a thank-offering for this mercy the special prayers for Guy Fawkes Day were regularly read on the Sunday nearest to November the Fifth, and though, owing to a deplorable access of broadmindedness, the Rev. the Hon. Reginald de Courcy had suppressed them in the eighteen-thirties, many of the old prayer books still had them, and Admiral Palliser always made a point of reading them to himself with some ostentation during the sermon on the appointed day.