Lance opened the office door, and gave a hint to Mr. Lamb, while they looked at each other by the fire.
Bernard was by far the most altered. The others were slightly changed, but still their “old selves,” while he was a grave responsible man, looking older than Lancelot, partly from the effects of climate; but Angela saw enough to make her exclaim, “Here we are! Don’t you feel as if we were had down to Felix to be blown up?”
“Not a bit altered,” said Bernard, looking at the desks and shelves of ledgers, with the photographs over the mantelpiece—Felix, Mr. Froggatt, the old foreman, and a print of Garofalo’s Vision of St. Augustine, hung up long ago by Felix, as Lance explained, as a token of the faith to which all human science and learning should be subordinated.
“A declaration of the Pursuivant,” said Angela. “How Fulbert did look out for Pur! I believe it was his only literature.”
“Phyllis declares,” said Bernard, “that nothing so upsets me as a failure in Pur’s arrival.”
“And this is Pur’s heart and centre!” said Robina.
“Only,” added Angela, “I miss the smell of burnt clay that used to pervade the place, and that Alda so hated.”
“Happily the clay is used up,” said Lance. “I could not have brought Gertrude and the children here if the ceramic art, as they call it, had not departed. Cherry was so delighted at our coming to live here. She loved the old struggling days.”
“Fulbert said he never felt as if he had been at home till he came here. He never took to Vale Leston.”
“Clement and Cherry have settled in very happily,” said Robina, “with convalescent clergy in the Vicarage.”