sense of
escape.

"Mrs. Alice," said Sir Thomas, "this is Mr. Ralph Torridon, of whom you
have heard me speak. I was fortunate enough to welcome him on the lawn
just now."

"I saw you, Mr. More," said his wife with dignity, as she took Ralph's
hand and said a word about the weather.

"Then I will confess," said Sir Thomas, smiling genially round, "I
welcomed Mr. Torridon with the back of my head, and with Anubis biting
my ears."

Ralph felt strangely drawn to this schoolboy kind of man, who romped
with dogs and lay on his stomach, and was so charmingly afraid of his
wife. His contempt began to melt as he looked at him and saw those wise
twinkling eyes, and strong humorous mouth, and remembered once more who
he was, and his reputation.

Sir Thomas said grace with great gravity and signed himself reverently
before he sat down. There was a little reading first of the Scriptures
and a commentary on it, and then as dinner went on Ralph began to attend
less and less to his hostess, who, indeed appeared wholly absorbed in
domestic details of the table and with whispering severely to the
servants behind her hand, and to listen and look towards the further end
where Sir Thomas sat in his tall chair, his flapped cap on his head, and
talked to his daughters on either side. Mr. Roper, the man who had come
in with Mrs. More, was sitting opposite Ralph, and seemed to be chiefly
occupied in listening too. A bright-looking tall girl, whom her father
had introduced by the name of Cecily, sat between Ralph and her father.

"Not at all," cried Sir Thomas, in answer to something that Ralph did
not catch, "nothing of the kind! It was Juno that screamed. Argus would
not condescend to it. He was occupied in dancing before the bantams."

Ralph lost one of the few remarks that Mrs. More addressed to him, in
wondering what this meant, and the conversation at the other end swept
round a corner while he was apologising. When he again caught the
current Sir Thomas was speaking of wherries.

"I would love to row a wherry," he said. "The fellows do not know their
fortune; they might lead such sweet meditative lives; they do not, I am
well aware, for I have never heard such blasphemy as I have heard from
wherrymen. But what opportunities are theirs! If I were not your father,
my darling, I would be a wherryman. _Si cognovisses et tu quae ad pacem
tibi_! Mr. Torridon, would you not be a wherryman if you were not Mr.
Torridon?"

"I thought n