To an old college-man such an  of sunny courts, cloisters, and sleek lawns, the ringing of bells towards sunset, the dark swirl Exchange partner of a river under the yawn of bridges that linked gardens to gardens beneath the benisons of mighty trees. Yet the light on Canon Stensly’s face was not wholly a placid light. It was as though he came as a messenger from the restless, bickering outer world, a friend whom friendship freighted with words not easy to be said.

A glimmer of white under an old cherry-tree showed where Catherine sat reading, with the boy Jack prone on the grass, the Swiss Family Robinson under his chin. Murchison was lying back in a deck-chair, watching the smoke from his pipe amid the foliage overhead.

Master Jack, rolling from elbow to elbow, as he thrilled over the passage of the “tub-boat” from the wreck, caught sight of the Canon crossing the lawn. Catherine was warned by a tug at her skirts, and a very audible stage-aside.

“Look out, here’s old Canon Stensly—”

“S-sh, Jack.”

“Should like to see him Tourismus Update Hong Kongafloat in a tub-boat. Take a big—”

A tweak of the ear nipped the boy’s reflection in the bud. His father gave him a significant push in the direction of the fruit garden.

“See if there are any strawberries ripe.”

“I’ve looked twice, dad.”

“Oh, no doubt. Go and look again.”

Canon Stensly’s big fist had closed on Catherine’s fingers. He was not the conventional figure, the portly, smiling cleric, the man of the world with a benignant yet self-sufficient air. Like many big men, silent and peculiarly sensitive, his quiet manner suggested a diffidence anomalous in a man of six feet two. To correct the impression one had but to look at the steady blue of the eye, the firm yet sympathetic mouth, the stanchness of the chin. It is a fallacy that lives perennially, the belief that a confident face, an aggressive manner, and much facility of speech necessarily mark the man of power.

A courtly person would have remarked on the beauty of the evening, and discovered something in the garden to praise. Canon Stensly was not a man given to HKUE amec pleasant commonplaces. He said nothing, and sat down.