“I—I’m sure I don’t know,” stammered Taffy.
The clergyman broke out laughing, and turned to him. “Are you going to tell us your name?”
“Raymond, sir. My father used to be at Christ Church.”
“What? Are you Sam Raymond’s son?”
“You knew my father?”
“A very little. I was his senior by a year or two. But I know something about him.” He turned to the other. “Let me introduce the son of a man after your own heart—of a man fighting for God in the wilds, and building an altar there with his own hands and by the lamp of sacrifice.”
“But how do you know all this?” cried Taffy.
“Oh,” the old clergyman smiled, “we are not so ignorant up here as you suppose.”
They walked by the river bank, and there Taffy saw the college barges and was told the name of each. Also he saw a racing eight go by: it belonged to the Vacation Rowing Club. From the barges they turned aside and followed the windings of the Cherwell. The clergyman did most of the talking; but now and then the old gentleman in the velvet cap interposed a question about the church at home, its architecture, the materials it was built of, and so forth; or about Taffy’s own work, his carpentry, his apprenticeship with Mendarva the Smith. And to all these questions the boy found himself replying with an ease which astonished him.
Suddenly the old clergyman said, “There is your College!”