oose rich shot silk tie of red and purple, a long
frock coat, grey trousers and brown shoes, and presently he removed his
hat and carried it in one hand. There were two tennis-playing youths
besides myself. There was also one father with three daughters in
anxious control, a father of the old school scarcely half broken
in, reluctant, rebellious and consciously and conscientiously "reet
Staffordshire." The daughters were all alert to suppress the possible
plungings, the undesirable humorous impulses of this almost feral guest.
They nipped his very gestures in the bud. The rest of the people were
mainly mothers with daughters--daughters of all ages, and a scattering
of aunts, and there was a tendency to clotting, parties kept together
and regarded parties suspiciously. Mr. Seddon was in hiding, I think,
all the time, though not formally absent.

Matters centred upon the tea in the long room of the French windows,
where four trim maids went to and fro busily between the house and the
clumps of people seated or standing before it; and tennis and croquet
were intermittently visible and audible beyond a bank of rockwork rich
with the spikes and cups and bells of high spring.

Mrs. Seddon presided at the tea urn, and Margaret partly assisted and
partly talked to me and my cousin Sibyl--Gertrude had found a disused
and faded initial and was partnering him at tennis in a state of gentle
revival--while their mother exercised a divided chaperonage from a seat
near Mrs. Seddon. The little curate, stirring a partially empty cup of
tea, mingled with our party, and preluded, I remember, every observation
he made by a vigorous resumption of stirring.

We talked of Cambridge, and Margaret kept us to it. The curate was a
Selwyn man and had taken a pass degree in theology, but Margaret had
come to Gaylord's lecturers in Trinity for a term before her breakdown,
and understood these differences. She had the eagerness of an exile
to hear the old familiar names of places and personalities. We capped
familiar anecdotes and were enthusiastic about Kings' Chapel and the
Backs, and the curate, addressing himself more particularly to Sibyl,
told a long confused story illustrative of his disposition to reckless
devilry (of a pure-minded kindly sort) about upsetting two canoes quite
needlessly on the way to Grantchester.

I can still see Margaret as I saw her that afternoon, see her fresh fair
face, with the little obliquity of the upper lip, an