"So few that we did not go out on the second day. We motored to a church instead--a very old church with a beautiful clerestory."
Mrs. Wordingham affected an intense interest.
"Old churches are wonderful," she said.
"You care no more about them than I do," said Harry Gaston brutally. "I am not going to tell you about the church."
"Oh, aren't you?" said Mrs. Wordingham.
"No. What I am going to tell you is this. The vicar is a friend of my host, and happened to be in the church when we arrived. He showed us the building himself, and then, taking us into the vestry, got out the parish register. It dates back a good many years. Well, turning over the leaves, I noticed quite carelessly an entry made by the vicar in the year 1786. It was a note of a donation which he had made to the parish as a thanksgiving for his recovery from a severe operation which had been performed upon him in Norwich by a famous surgeon of the day named Twiddy."
"Yes?" said Mrs. Wordingham.
"That little entry occupied my mind much more than the church," continued Caston. "I wondered what the vicar must have felt as he travelled into Norwich in those days of no chloroform, no antiseptics, of sloughing wounds, and hospital fevers. Not much chance of his ever coming back again, eh? And then the revulsion when he did recover--the return home to Frimley-next-the-Sea alive and well! It must all have been pretty wonderful to the vicar in 1786, eh?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Wordingham submissively.
"I couldn't get him out of my head and when I returned to London a couple of days ago, I saw in a bookseller's this book."