e apse
had spread over the garden to the steps of the porch. Anyone looking
over the garden wall would have beheld a scene typical of the heart of
England--a scene of peace, ease and perfectly ordered comfort. The two
well-built young men, one a minor canon, the other a curate, lounging
in their flannels, clever-faced, honest-eyed, could have been bred
nowhere but in English public schools and at Oxford or Cambridge. The
two elderly ladies were of the fine flower of provincial England; the
two old men, so different outwardly, one burly, florid, exquisitely
ecclesiastical, the other thin, nervous, soldierly, each was an
expression of high English tradition. The two young girls, unerringly
correct and dainty, for all their modern abandonment of attitude,
pretty, flushed of cheek, frank of glance, were two of a hundred
thousand flowers of girlhood that could have been picked that
afternoon in lazy English gardens. And Marmaduke's impeccable grey
costume struck a harmonizing English note of Bond Street and the
Burlington Arcade. The scent of the roses massed in delicate splendour
against the wall, and breathing now that the cool shade had fallen on
them, crept through the still air to the flying buttresses and the
window mullions and traceries and the pinnacles of the great English
cathedral. And in the midst of the shaven lawn gleamed the old
cut-glass jug on its silver tray.

Some one did look over the wall and survey the scene: a man,
apparently supporting himself with tense, straightened arms on the
coping; a man with a lean, bronzed, clean-shaven face, wearing an old
soft felt hat at a swaggering angle; a man with a smile on his face
and a humorous twinkle in his eyes. By chance he had leisure to survey
the scene for some time unobserved. At last he shouted:

"Hello! Have none of you ever moved for the last ten years?"

At the summons every one was startled. The young men scrambled to
their feet. The Dean rose and glared at the intruder, who sprang over
the wall, recklessly broke through the rose-bushes and advanced with
outstretched hand to meet him.

"Hello, Uncle Edward!"

"Goodness gracious me!" cried the Dean. "It's Oliver!"

"Right first time," said the young man, gripping him by the hand.
"You're not looking a day older. And Aunt Sophia----" He strode up to
Mrs. Conover and kissed her. "Do you know," he went on, holding her at
arm's length and looking round at the astonished company, "the last
time I saw