"Mrs. Trupp," he said.
Ernie leaned over. Except for the silver in her hair, his god-mother had altered little; but he would hardly have recognized in the stately young woman who walked at her side the flapper who had waved him good-bye from the nursery-window years before.
His neighbour was conveying to him information about the great surgeon.
"He's our greatest man by far. Mr. Trupp of Beachbourne. They come from all parts to him. He saved the Tsar of Dobrudja—when all the rest had taken to their prayers."
"Ah," said Ernie, "I think I ave eard of im."
The bus, for all its rushing manners of a parvenu, stopped opposite the Star; but the old beam across the road was gone.
Ernie felt himself aggrieved, and complained to the conductor as he got down.
"Well, you didn't want your head took off every time, did you?" said that unsympathetic worthy.
Ernie strolled up Church Street, living his past over again. Here at least he found the rich, slow atmosphere he had expected. There was the long-backed church standing massive and noble as of old on its eminence above the Moot; beneath it in the hollow the brown roof of the Quaker Meeting-house; and on his left the little ironmonger's shop outside which Alf had seen Mrs. Pigott and her dog Sharkie on the fatal day they sacked the walnut-tree.
At Billing's Corner he was reassured to find the high flint-wall that ran at the back of Rectory Walk making its old sharp corner and the fig-tree peeping over it. The Rectory, too, still stood in pharisaic aloofness amid gloomy evergreens. And out of it was coming the Rector, walking mincingly just as of yore.