EDDY was met at the station by his sister Daphne, driving the dog-cart. Daphne was twenty; a small, neat person in tailor-made tweeds, bright-haired, with an attractive brown-tanned face, and alert blue eyes, and a decisively-cut mouth, and long, straight chin. Daphne was off-hand, quick-witted, intensely practical, spoilt, rather selfish, very sure of herself, and with an unveiled youthful contempt for manners and people that failed to meet with her approval. Either people were “all right,” and “pretty decent,” or they were cursorily dismissed as “queer,” “messy,” or “stodgy.” She was very good at all games requiring activity, speed, and dexterity of hand, and more at home out of doors than in. She had quite enough sense of humour, a sharp tongue, some cleverness, and very little imagination indeed. A confident young person, determined to get and keep the best out of life. With none of Eddy’s knack of seeing a number of things at once, she saw a few things very clearly, and went straight towards them.

“Hullo, young Daffy,” Eddy called out to her, as he came out of the station.

She waved her whip at him.

“Hullo. I’ve brought the new pony along. Come and try him. He shies at cats and small children, so look out through the streets. How are you, Tedders? Pretty fit?”

“Yes, rather. How’s everyone?”

“Going strong, as usual. Father talks Prayer Book revision every night at dinner till I drop asleep. He’s got it fearfully hot and strong just now; meetings about it twice a week, and letters to the Guardian in between. I wish they’d hurry up and get it revised and have done. Oh, by the way, he says you’ll want to fight him about that now—because you’ll be too High to want it touched, or something. Are you High?”

“Oh, I think so. But I should like the Prayer Book to be revised, too.”

Daphne sighed. “It’s a bore if you’re High. Father’ll want to argue at meals. I do hope you don’t want to keep the Athanasian Creed, anyhow.”

“Yes, rather. I like it, except the bits slanging other people.”

“Oh, well,” Daphne looked relieved. “As long as you don’t like those bits, I daresay it’ll be all right. Canon Jackson came to lunch yesterday, and he liked it, slanging and all, and oh, my word, how tired I got of him and father! What can it matter whether one has it or not? It’s only a few times a year, anyhow. Oh, and father’s keen on a new translation of the Bible, too. I daresay you’ve seen about it; he keeps writing articles in the Spectator about it.... And the Bellairs have got a new car, a Panhard; Molly’s learning to drive it. Nevill let me the other day; it was ripping. I do wish father’d keep a car. I should think he might now. It would be awfully useful for him for touring round to committee meetings. Mind that corner; Timothy always funks it a bit.”

They turned into the drive. It may or may not have hitherto been mentioned that Eddy’s home was a Deanery, because his father was a Dean. The Cathedral under his care was in a midland county, in fine, rolling, high-hedged country, suitable for hunting, and set with hard-working squires. The midlands may not be picturesque or romantic, but they are wonderfully healthy, and produce quite a number of sane, level-headed, intelligent people.

Eddy’s father and mother were in the hall.

“You look a little tired, dear,” said his mother, after the greetings that may be imagined. “I expect it will be good for you to get a rest at home.”

“Trust Finch to keep his workers on the run,” said the Dean, who had been at Cambridge with Finch, and hadn’t liked him particularly. Finch had been too High Church for his taste even then; he himself had always been Broad, which was, no doubt, why he was now a dean.

“Christmas is a busy time,” said Eddy, tritely.

The Dean shook his head. “They overdo it, you know, those people. Too many services, and meetings, and guilds, and I don’t know what. They spoil their own work by it.”

He was, naturally, anxious about Eddy. He didn’t want him to get involved with the ritualist set and become that sort of parson; he thought it foolish, obscurantist, childish, and unintelligent, not to say a little unmanly.

They went into lunch. The Dean was rather vexed because Eddy, forgetting where he was, crossed himself at grace. Eddy perceived this, and registered a note not to do it again.

“And when have you to be back, dear?” said his mother. She, like many deans’ wives, was a dignified, intelligent, and courteous lady, with many social claims punctually and graciously fulfilled, and a great love of breeding, nice manners, and suitable attire. She had many anxieties, finely restrained. She was anxious lest the Dean should overwork himself and get a bad throat; lest Daphne should get a tooth knocked out at mixed hockey, or a leg broken in the hunting-field; lest Eddy should choose an unsuitable career or an unsuitable wife, or very unsuitable ideas. These were her negative anxieties. Her positive ones were that the Dean should be recognised according to his merits; that Daphne should marry the right man; that Eddy should be a success, and also please his father; that the Prayer Book might be revised very soon.

One of her ambitions for Eddy was satisfied forthwith, for he pleased his father.

“I’m not going back to St. Gregory’s at all.”

The Dean looked up quickly.

“Oh, you’ve given that up, have you? Well, it couldn’t go on always, of course.” He wanted to ask, “What have you decided about Orders?” but, as fathers go, he was fairly tactful. Besides, he knew Daphne would.

“Are you going into the Church, Tedders?”

Her mother, as always when she put it like that, corrected her. “You know father hates you to say that, Daphne. Take Orders.”

“Well, take Orders, then. Are you, Tedders?”

“I think not,” said Eddy, good-tempered as brothers go. “At present I’ve been offered a small reviewing job on the Daily Post. I was rather lucky, because it’s awfully hard to get on the Post, and, of course, I’ve had no experience except at Cambridge; but I know Maine, the literary editor. I used to review a good deal for the Cambridge Weekly when his brother ran it. I think it will be rather fun. You get such lots of nice books to keep for your own if you review.”

“Nice and otherwise, no doubt,” said the Dean. “You’ll want to get rid of most of them, I expect. Well, reviewing is an interesting side of journalism, of course, if you are going to try journalism. You genuinely feel you want to do this, do you?”

He still had hopes that Eddy, once free of the ritualistic set, would become a Broad Church clergyman in time. But clergymen are the broader, he believed, for knocking about the world a little first.

Eddy said he did genuinely feel he wanted to do it.

“I’m rather keen to do a little writing of my own as well,” he added, “and it will leave me some time for that, as well as time for other work. I want to go sometimes to work in the settlement of a man I know, too.”

“What shall you write?” Daphne wanted to know.

“Oh, much what every one else writes, I suppose. I leave it to your imagination.”

“H’m. Perhaps it will stay there,” Daphne speculated, which was superfluously unkind, considering that Eddy used to write quite a lot at Cambridge, in the Review, the Magazine, the Granta, the Basileon, and even the Tripod.

“An able journalist,” said the Dean, “has a great power in his hands. He can do more than the politicians to mould public opinion. It’s a great responsibility. Look at the Guardian, now; and the Times.”

Eddy looked at them, where they lay on the table by the window. He looked also at the Spectator, Punch, the Morning Post, the Saturday Westminster, the Quarterly, the Church Quarterly, the Hibbert, the Cornhill, the Commonwealth, the Common Cause, and Country Life. These were among the periodicals taken in at the Deanery. Among those not taken in were the Clarion, the Eye-Witness (as it was called in those bygone days) the Church Times, Poetry and Drama, the Blue Review, the English Review, the Suffragette, Further, and all the halfpenny dailies. All the same, it was a well-read home, and broad-minded, too, and liked to hear two sides (but not more) of a question, as will be inferred from the above list of its periodical literature.

They had coffee in the hall after lunch. Grace, ease, spaciousness, a quiet, well-bred luxury, characterised the Deanery. It was a well-marked change to Eddy, both from the asceticism of St. Gregory’s, and the bohemianism (to use an idiotic, inevitable word) of many of his other London friends. This was a true gentleman’s home, one of the stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand.

Daphne proposed that they should visit another that afternoon. She had to call at the Bellairs’ for a puppy. Colonel Bellairs was a land-owner and J.P., whose home was two miles out of the town. His children and the Dean’s children had been intimate friends since the Dean came to Welchester from Ely, where he had been a Canon, five years ago. Molly Bellairs was Daphne Oliver’s greatest friend. There were also several boys, who flourished respectively in Parliament, the Army, Oxford, Eton, and Dartmouth. They were fond of Eddy, but did not know why he did not enter one of the Government services, which seems the obvious thing to do.

Before starting on this expedition, Daphne and Eddy went round the premises, as they always did on Eddy’s first day at home. They played a round of bumble-puppy on the small lawn, inspected the new tennis court that had just been laid, and was in danger of not lying quite flat, and visited the kennels and the stables, where Eddy fed his horse with a carrot and examined his legs, and discussed with the groom the prospects of hunting weather next week, and Daphne petted the nervous Timothy, who shied at children and cats.

These pleasing duties done, they set out briskly for the Hall, along the field path. It was just not freezing. The air blew round them crisp and cool and stinging, and sang in the bare beech woods that their path skirted. Above them white clouds sailed about a blue sky. The brown earth was full of a repressed yet vigorous joy. Eddy and Daphne swung along quickly through fields and lanes. Eddy felt the exuberance of the crisp weather and the splendid earth tingle through him. It was one of the many things he loved, and felt utterly at home with, this motion across open country, on foot or on horse-back. Daphne, too, felt and looked at home, with her firm, light step, and her neat, useful stick, and her fair hair blowing in strands under her tweed hat, and all the competent, wholesome young grace of her. Daphne was rather charming, there was no doubt about that. It sometimes occurred to Eddy when he met her after an absence. There was a sort of a drawing-power about her that was quite apart from beauty, and that made her a popular and sought-after person, in spite of her casual manners and her frequent selfishnesses. The young men of the neighbourhood all liked Daphne, and consequently she had a very good time, and was decidedly spoilt, and, in a cool, not unattractive way, rather conceited. She seldom had any tumbles mortifying to her self-confidence, partly because she was in general clever and competent at the things that came in her way to do, and partly because she did not try to do those she would have been less good at, not from any fear of failure, but simply because she was bored by them. But a clergyman’s daughter, even a dean’s, has, unfortunately, to do a few things that bore her. One is bazaars. Another is leaving things at cottages. Mrs. Oliver had given them a brown paper parcel to leave at a house in the lane. They left it, and Eddy stayed for a moment to talk with the lady of the house. Master Eddy was generally beloved in Welchester, because he always had plenty of attention to bestow even on the poorest and dullest. Miss Daphne was beloved, too, and admired, but was usually more in a hurry. She was in a hurry to-day, and wouldn’t let Eddy stay long.

“If you let Mrs. Tom Clark start on Tom’s abscess, we should never get to the Hall to-day,” she said, as they left the cottage. “Besides, I hate abscesses.”

“But I like Tom and his wife,” said Eddy.

“Oh, they’re all right. The cottage is awfully stuffy, and always in a mess. I should think she might keep it cleaner, with a little perseverance and carbolic soap. Perhaps she doesn’t because Miss Harris is always jawing to her about it. I wouldn’t tidy up, I must say, if Miss Harris was on to me about my room. What do you think, she’s gone and made mother promise I shall take the doll stall at the Assistant Curates’ Bazaar. It’s too bad. I’d have dressed any number of dolls, but I do bar selling them. It’s a hunting day, too. It’s an awful fate to be a parson’s daughter. It’s all right for you; parsons’ sons don’t have to sell dolls.”

“Look here,” said Eddy, “are we having people to stay after Christmas?”

“Don’t think so. Only casual droppers-in here and there; Aunt Maimie and so on. Why?”

“Because, if we’ve room, I want to ask some people; friends of mine in London. Denison’s one.”

Daphne, who knew Denison slightly, and did not like him, received this without joy. They had met last year at Cambridge, and he had annoyed her in several ways. One was his clothes; Daphne liked men to be neat. Another was, that at the dance given by the college which he and Eddy adorned, he had not asked her to dance, though introduced for that purpose, but had stood at her side while she sat partnerless through her favourite waltz, apparently under the delusion that what was required of him was interesting conversation. Even that had failed before long, as Daphne had neither found it interesting nor pretended to do so, and they remained in silence together, she indignant and he unperturbed, watching the festivities with an indulgent, if cynical, eye. A disagreeable, useless, superfluous person, Daphne considered him. He gathered this; it required no great subtlety to gather things from Daphne; and accommodated himself to her idea of him, laying himself out to provoke and tease. He was one of the few people who could sting Daphne to real temper.

So she said, “Oh.”

“The others,” went on Eddy, hastily, “are two girls I know; they’ve been over-working rather and are run down, and I thought it might be rather good for them to come here. Besides, they’re great friends of mine, and of Denison’s—(one of them’s his cousin)—and awfully nice. I’ve written about them sometimes, I expect—Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine. Jane draws extraordinarily nice things in pen and ink, and is altogether rather a refreshing person. Eileen plays the violin—you must have heard her name—Mrs. Le Moine. Everyone’s going to hear her just now; she’s wonderful.”

“She’d better play at the bazaar, I should think,” suggested Daphne, who didn’t see why parsons’ daughters should be the only ones involved in this bazaar business. She wasn’t very fond of artists and musicians and literary people, for the most part; so often their conversation was about things that bored one.

“Are they pretty?” she inquired, wanting to know if Eddy was at all in love with either of them. It might be amusing if he was.

Eddy considered. “I don’t know that you’d call Jane pretty, exactly. Very nice to look at. Sweet-looking, and extraordinarily innocent.”

“I don’t like sweet innocent girls,” said Daphne. “They’re so inept, as a rule.”

“Well, Jane’s very ept. She’s tremendously clever at her own things, you know; in fact, clever all round, only clever’s not a bit the word as a matter of fact. She’s a genius, I suppose—a sort of inspired child, very simple about everything, and delightful to talk to. Not the least conventional.”

“No; I didn’t suppose she’d be that. And what’s Mrs.—the other one like?”

“Mrs. Le Moine. Oh, well—she’s—she’s very nice, too.”

“Pretty?”

“Rather beautiful, she is. Irish, and a little Hungarian, I believe. She plays marvellously.”

“Yes, you said that.”

Daphne’s thoughts on Mrs. Le Moine produced the question, “Is she married, or a widow?”

“Married. She’s quite friends with her husband.”

“Well, I suppose she would be. Ought to be, anyhow. Can we have her without him, by the way?”

“Oh, they don’t live together. That’s why they’re friends. They weren’t till they parted. Everyone asks them about separately of course. She lives with a Miss Hogan, an awfully charming person. I’d love to ask her, too, but there wouldn’t be room. I wonder if mother’ll mind my asking those three?”

“You’d better find out,” advised Daphne. “They won’t rub father the wrong way, I suppose, will they? He doesn’t like being surprised, remember. You’d better warn Mr. Denison not to talk against religion or anything.”

“Oh, Denison will be all right. He knows it’s a Deanery.”

“Will the others know it’s a Deanery, too?”

Eddy, to say the truth, had a shade of doubt as to that. They were both so innocent. Arnold had learnt a little at Cambridge about the attitude of the superior clergy, and what not to say to them, though he knew more than he always practised. Jane had been at Somerville College, Oxford, but this particular branch of learning is not taught there. Eileen had never adorned any institution for the higher education. Her father was an Irish poet, and the editor of a Nationalist paper, and did not like any of the many Deans of his acquaintance. In Ireland, Deans and Nationalists do not always see eye to eye. Eddy hoped that Eileen had not any hereditary distaste for the profession.

“Father and mother’ll think it funny, Mrs. Le Moine not living with her husband,” said Daphne, who had that insight into her parents’ minds which comes of twenty years co-residence.

Eddy was afraid they would.

“But it’s not funny, really, and they’ll soon see it’s quite all right. They’ll like her, I know. Everyone who knows her does.”

He remembered as he spoke that Hillier didn’t, and James Peters didn’t much. But surely the Dean wouldn’t be found on any point in agreement with Hillier, or even with the cheery, unthinking Peters, innocent of the Higher Criticism. Perhaps it might be diplomatic to tell the Dean that these two young clergymen didn’t much like Eileen Le Moine.

While Eddy ruminated on this question, they reached the Hall. The Hall was that type of hall they erected in the days of our earlier Georges; it had risen on the site of an Elizabethan house belonging to the same family. This is mentioned in order to indicate that the Bellairs’ had long been of solid worth in the country. In themselves, they were pleasant, hospitable, clean-bred, active people, of a certain charm, which those susceptible to all kinds of charm, like Eddy, felt keenly. Finally, none of them were clever, all of them were nicely dressed, and most of them were on the lawn, hitting at a captive golf-ball, which was one of the many things they did well, though it is at best an unsatisfactory occupation, achieving little in the way of showy results. They left it readily to welcome Eddy and Daphne.

Dick (the Guards) said, “Hullo, old man, home for Christmas? Good for you. Come and shoot on Wednesday, will you? Not a parson yet, then?”

Daphne said, “He’s off that just now.”

Eddy said, “I’m going on a paper for the present.”

Claude (Magdalen) said, “A what? What a funny game! Shall you have to go to weddings and sit at the back and write about the bride’s clothes? What a rag!”

Nevill (the House of Commons) said, “What paper?” in case it should be one on the wrong side. It may here be mentioned (what may or may not have been inferred) that the Bellairs’ belonged to the Conservative party in the state. Nevill a little suspected Eddy’s soundness in this matter (though he did not know that Eddy belonged to the Fabian Society as well as to the Primrose League). Also he knew well the sad fact that our Liberal organs are largely served by Conservative journalists, and our great Tory press fed by Radicals from Balliol College, Oxford, King’s College, Cambridge, and many other less refined homes of sophistry. This fact Nevill rightly called disgusting. He did not think these journalists honest or good men. So he asked, “What paper?” rather suspiciously.

Eddy said, “The Daily Post,” which is a Conservative organ, and also costs a penny, a highly respectable sum, so Nevill was relieved.

“Afraid you might be going on some Radical rag,” he said, quite superfluously, as it had been obvious he had been afraid of that. “Some Unionists do. Awfully unprincipled, I call it. I can’t see how they square it with themselves.”

“I should think quite easily,” said Eddy; but added, to avert an argument (he had tried arguing with Nevill often, and failed), “But my paper’s politics won’t touch me. I’m going as literary reviewer, entirely.”

“Oh, I see.” Nevill lost interest, because literature isn’t interesting, like politics. “Novels and poetry, and all that.” Novels and poetry and all that of course must be reviewed, if written; but neither the writing of them nor the reviewing (perhaps not the reading either, only that takes less time) seems quite a man’s work.

Molly (the girl) said, “I think it’s an awfully interesting plan, Eddy,” though she was a little sorry Eddy wasn’t going into the Church. (The Bellairs were allowed to call it that, though Daphne wasn’t.)

Molly could be relied on always to be sympathetic and nice. She was a sunny, round-faced person of twenty, with clear, amber-brown eyes and curly brown hair, and a merry infectious laugh. People thought her a dear little girl; she was so sweet-tempered, and unselfish, and charmingly polite, and at the same time full of hilarious high spirits, and happy, tomboyish energies. Though less magnetic, she was really much nicer than Daphne. The two were very fond of one another. Everyone, including her brothers and Eddy Oliver, was fond of Molly. Eddy and she had become, in the last two years, since Molly grew up, close friends.

“Well, look here,” said Daphne, “we’ve come for the puppy,” and so they all went to the yard, where the puppy lived.

The puppy was plump and playful and amber-eyed, and rather like Molly, as Eddy remarked.

“The Diddums! I wish I was like him,” Molly returned, hugging him, while his brother and sister tumbled about her ankles. “He’s rather fatter than Wasums, Daffy, but not quite so tubby as Babs. I thought you should have the middle one.”

“He’s an utter joy,” said Daphne, taking him.

“Perhaps I’d better walk down the lane with you when you go,” said Molly, “so as to break the parting for him. But come in to tea now, won’t you.”

“Shall we, Eddy?” said Daphne. “D’you think we should? There’ll be canons’ wives at home.”

“That settles it,” said Eddy. “There won’t be us. Much as I like canons’ wives, it’s rather much on one’s very first day. I have to get used to these things gradually, or I get upset. Come on, Molly, there’s time for one go at bumble-puppy before tea.”

They went off together, and Daphne stayed about the stables and yard with the boys and the dogs.

The Bellairs’ had that immensely preferable sort of tea which takes place round a table, and has jam and knives. They didn’t have this at the Deanery, because people do drop in so at Deaneries, and there mightn’t be enough places laid, besides, drawing-room tea is politer to canons and their wives. So that alone would have been a reason why Daphne and Eddy liked tea with the Bellairs’. Also, the Bellairs’ en famille were a delightful and jolly party. Colonel Bellairs was hospitable, genial, and entertaining; Mrs. Bellairs was most wonderfully kind, and rather like Molly on a sobered, motherly, and considerably filled-out scale. They were less enlightened than at the Deanery, but quite prepared to admit that the Prayer Book ought to be revised, if the Dean thought so, though for them, personally, it was good enough as it stood. There were few people so kind-hearted, so genuinely courteous and well-bred.

Colonel Bellairs, though a little sorry for the Dean because Eddy didn’t seem to be settling down steadily into a sensible profession—(in his own case the “What to do with our boys” problem had always been very simple)—was fond of his friend’s son, and very kind to him, and thought him a nice, attractive lad, even if he hadn’t yet found himself. He and his wife both hoped that Eddy would make this discovery before long, for a reason they had.

After tea Claude and Molly started back with the Olivers, to break the parting for Diddums. Eddy wanted to tell Molly about his prospects, and for her to tell him how interesting they were (Molly was always so delightfully interested in anything one told her), so he and she walked on ahead down the lane, in the pale light of the Christmas moon, that rose soon after tea. (It was a year when this occurred).

“I expect,” he said, “you think it’s fairly feeble to have begun a thing and be dropping it so soon. But I suppose one has to try round a little, to find out what one’s job really is.”

“Why, of course. It would be absurd to stick on if it isn’t really what you like to do.”

“I did like it, too. Only I found I didn’t want to give it quite all my time and interest. I can’t be that sort of thorough, one-job man. The men there are. Traherne, now—I wish you knew him; he’s splendid. He simply throws himself into it body and soul, and says no to everything else. I can’t. I don’t think I even want to. Life’s too many-sided for that, it seems to me, and one wants to have it all—or lots of it, anyhow. The consequence was that I was chucked out. Finch told me I was to cut off those other things, or get out. So I got out. I quite see his point of view, and that he was right in a way; but I couldn’t do it. He wanted me to see less of my friends, for one thing; thought they got in the way of work, which perhaps they may have sometimes; also he didn’t much approve of all of them. That’s so funny. Why shouldn’t one be friends with anyone one can, even if their point of view isn’t altogether one’s own?”

“Of course.” Molly considered it for a moment, and added, “I believe I could be friends with anyone, except a heathen.”

“A what?”

“A heathen. An unbeliever, you know.”

“Oh, I see. I thought you meant a black. Well, it partly depends on what they don’t believe, of course. I think, personally, one should try to believe as many things as one can, it’s more interesting; but I don’t feel any barrier between me and those who believe much less. Nor would you, if you got to know them and like them. One doesn’t like people for what they believe, or dislike them for what they don’t believe. It simply doesn’t come in at all.”

All the same, Molly did not think she could be real friends with a heathen. The fact that Eddy did, very slightly worried her; she preferred to agree with Eddy. But she was always staunch to her own principles, and didn’t attempt to do so in this matter.

“I want you to meet some friends of mine who I hope are coming to stay after Christmas,” went on Eddy, who knew he could rely on a much more sympathetic welcome for his friends from Molly than from Daphne. “I’m sure you’ll like them immensely. One’s Arnold Denison, whom I expect you’ve heard of.” (Molly had, from Daphne.) “The others are girls—Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine.” He talked a little about Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine, as he had talked to Daphne, but more fully, because Molly was a more gratifying listener.

“They sound awfully nice. So original and clever,” was her comment. “It must be perfectly ripping to be able to do anything really well. I wish I could.”

“So do I,” said Eddy. “I love the people who can. They’re so—— well, alive, somehow. Even more than most people, I mean; if possible,” he added, conscious of Molly’s intense aliveness, and Daphne’s, and his own, and Diddums’. But the geniuses, he knew, had a sort of white-hot flame of living beyond even that....

“We’d better wait here for the others,” said Molly, stopping at the field gate, “and I’ll hand over Diddums to Daffy. He’ll feel it’s all right if I put him in her arms and tell him to stay there.”

They waited, sitting on the stile. The silver light flooded the brown fields, turning them grey and pale. It silvered Diddums’ absurd brown body as he snuggled in Molly’s arms, and Molly’s curly, escaping waves of hair and small sweet face, a little paled by its radiance. To Eddy the grey fields and woods and Molly and Diddums beneath the moon made a delightful home-like picture, of which he himself was very much part. Eddy certainly had a convenient knack of fitting into any picture without a jar, whether it was a Sunday School class at St. Gregory’s, a Sunday Games Club in Chelsea, a canons’ tea at the Deanery, the stables and kennels at the Hall, or a walk with a puppy over country fields. He belonged to all of them, and they to him, so that no one ever said “What is he doing in that galÈre?” as is said from time to time of most of us.

Eddy, as they waited for Claude and Daphne at the gate, was wondering a little whether his new friends would fit easily into this picture. He hoped so, very much.

The others came up, bickering as usual. Molly put Diddums into Daphne’s arms and told him to stay there, and they parted.