Free A Match for Mary Bennet by Eucharista Ward Page A

his plate. “You are in the right, Lizzy. We cannot allow Kitty so great an advantage over her elders. I will ask him to tea on Sunday.”
    ***
    Though the elder Bennets spent Sunday at Otherfield with the Bingleys, the rest of the family enjoyed tea with Mr. Oliver. A somewhat nervous-looking Mr. Oliver acknowledged Elizabeth’s introductions with a stiff bow to Mary, to Georgiana, and less solemnly to Kitty, while the girls curtsied formally. When they seated themselves, he hesitantly folded his tall, thin body into the proffered chair. “Miss Catherine was so kind as to introduce herself to me in the library.”
    Elizabeth smiled. “I have asked the girls to let you pursue your studies undisturbed. Have you made a good start?” She poured his tea and offered the tray of raspberry scones.
    He gingerly balanced his cup and saucer with his left hand and reached out his right for a scone, then looked around for a place to put it. Delia placed a large napkin on the polished table next to his chair and he smiled his relief as he set it down. “I wondered how to drink tea without a third hand.” Then he responded to Elizabeth. “I have made a start, but there is so much! I have never seen so complete and magnificent a collection.” He turned to Darcy. “You have excellent taste in books, sir.”
    Darcy thanked him. “The library was my father’s treasure. I have tried to finish the sets he started, more to honour his memory than to indulge in my own taste, which might run to more historical or fictional works.”
    Catherine, who had opened her mouth several times to address the guest, finally found an opening. “Tell me all about Saint Augustine, Mr. Oliver! Why do you want to read all his works?”
    Oliver laughed. “Oh, I do not expect to live long enough for a project like that! I merely hope to study enough to keep my preaching orthodox.”
    Kitty squirmed gleefully. “Mary told me that Saint Augustine once had a vision of the child Jesus at the seashore. He was digging a hole in the sand, and…”
    Oliver laughed, putting up a hand to stop her. “A medieval tale, I am afraid. Those medievals liked their saints floating above the earth in all manner of miracles.”
    Elizabeth turned to Mary. “What story is that?”
    Mary felt her face warm at the unwanted attention, but his cavalier dismissal of the tale gave her courage born of indignation. “He walked the shore trying to understand the Trinity. He asked what the child was doing, and the child said, ‘Digging a hole to put the ocean in.’ Augustine said, ‘You cannot do that; it is impossible.’ And the child said, ‘It is easier for me to put the whole ocean into this hole than for you to understand the Trinity.’ Then the child vanished, and Augustine knew it was Jesus.” She raised her chin high and stated firmly, “I read that in a book.” She felt sure that any clergyman who scoffed at beautifully devotional legends would give dry sermons.
    Oliver brushed some crumbs from his mustache with the large napkin. “Oh, there is some truth behind it, I am sure. I fancy it was meant to convey to simple souls much of what the saint wrote in his treatise on the Trinity.”
    Darcy looked up in interest. “What was that?”
    â€œHe prayed for his readers, and he begged them to correct him if he went wrong because he knew he tackled a subject beyond him. Great men are that humble.” Oliver gratefully relinquished his cup and saucer to the attentive Delia even as he reached for another scone. To Darcy he added, “It is one of my favourite parts of Augustine’s work, because as I read it I am assured that a great saint has prayed for me. That is comfort in trying times.”
    Mary’s eyes widened at that. She forgot her embarrassment and her resentment. She determined to find that book some day and take that solace