necessary for me to know before I met Brenda
and his sister; and I waited for him, now, to renew his invitation. I
preferred that _he_ should re-open that subject; but he came to it rather
obliquely.

"Well!" he remarked. "Might as well be getting on, I suppose?"

I nodded and got out of the car.

"Can you find your way up?" he proceeded.

"Alone?" I asked.

"It's only about half a mile," he explained, "You can't miss it. You see,
I want to get the car back to the house. Don't do it any good standing
about here. Besides, it wouldn't do for them to think as I was holding it
over them."

Even the picture of a herculean Banks holding that car over the Jervaises
failed to divert me, just then. I was too much occupied with my new
friend's simple absence of tact. I would sooner have faced a return to the
Hall than an unsupported appearance at the Farm.

"Oh! I'm not going up there alone," I said.

Banks was honestly surprised. "Why not?" he asked. "You met Anne last
night, didn't you? That'll be all right. You tell her I told you to come
up. _She'll_ understand."

I shook my head. "It won't take you long to run up to the Hall and put the
car in," I said. "I'll cut across the Park and meet you in that wood just
below your house--the way that Jervaise and I went last night."

He looked distressed. He could not understand my unwillingness to go
alone, but his sense of what was due to me would not permit him to let me
wait for him in the wood.

"But, I can't see..." he began, and then apparently realising that he was
failing either in respect or in hospitality, he continued, "Oh! well, I'll
just run up with you at once; it won't take us ten minutes, and half an
hour one way or the other won't make any difference."

I accepted his sacrifice without further protestation; and after he had
carefully replaced the tarpaulin over the tonneau of the car, we set off
briskly towards the Farm. About a third of a mile farther on we left the
highroad for a side road, and another three or four minutes' walk up the
hill brought us to the main entrance to the Farm. I saw, now, that I had
come with Jervaise to a side door last night. This front approach was more
imposing--up a drive through an avenue of limes. The house seen from this
aspect looked very sweet and charming. It was obviously of a date not
later than the sixteenth century, and I guessed that the rough-cast
probably concealed a half-timber work structure. In front of i