'scriptions on the boxes and make your bill out funny, and
not be snobs to customers, no!--not even if they had titles."

"Every Pinky Dinky's people are rather good people, and better than most
Pinky Dinky's people. But he does not put on side."

"Pinky Dinkys become playful at the sight of women."

"'Croquet's my game,' said the Pinky Dinky, and felt a man
condescended."

"But what the devil do they think they're up to, anyhow?" roared old
Hatherleigh suddenly, dropping plump into bottomless despair.

We felt we had still failed to get at the core of the mystery of the
Pinky Dinky.

We tried over things about his religion. "The Pinky Dinky goes to King's
Chapel, and sits and feels in the dusk. Solemn things! Oh HUSH! He
wouldn't tell you--"

"He COULDN'T tell you."

"Religion is so sacred to him he never talks about it, never reads about
it, never thinks about it. Just feels!"

"But in his heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a
doubt--"

Some one protested.

"Not a vulgar doubt," Esmeer went on, "but a kind of hesitation whether
the Ancient of Days is really exactly what one would call good form....
There's a lot of horrid coarseness got into the world somehow. SOMEBODY
put it there.... And anyhow there's no particular reason why a man
should be seen about with Him. He's jolly Awful of course and all
that--"

"The Pinky Dinky for all his fun and levity has a clean mind."

"A thoroughly clean mind. Not like Esmeer's--the Pig!"

"If once he began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at
croquet?"

"It's their Damned Modesty," said Hatherleigh suddenly, "that's what's
the matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice dressed up as a
virtue and taking the poor dears in. Cambridge is soaked with it; it's
some confounded local bacillus. Like the thing that gives a flavour to
Havana cigars. He comes up here to be made into a man and a ruler of
the people, and he thinks it shows a nice disposition not to take on the
job! How the Devil is a great Empire to be run with men like him?"

"All his little jokes and things," said Esmeer regarding his feet on
the fender, "it's just a nervous sniggering--because he's afraid....
Oxford's no better."

"What's he afraid of?" said I.

"God knows!" exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire.

"LIFE!" said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he added, and made a
thoughtful silence for a time.

"I say," began Carter, who was doing th