"Then you won't see us play Shipcot on Saturday, the last match of the season?" said Godbold in disappointed benevolence.
"No, I shan't, I'm afraid. You see, my son is not so busy as I am."
"Ah, but he's been very busy lately. Isn't that right, Mr. Hazlewood?" Godbold chuckled with a wink across at Guy. "Well, we've all been expecting it for some time past and he has our good wishes. That he has. As sweetly pretty a young lady as you'll see in a month of Sundays."
His father shrank perceptibly from a dominical prevision so foreign to his nature, and Guy changed the conversation by pointing out features in the landscape.
"Extraordinarily inspiring sort of country," he affirmed.
"So I should imagine," said his father. "Though precisely what that epithet implies I don't quite know."
Guy was determined not to be put out of humour and, surrendering the epithet at once, he substituted 'bracing'.
"So is Hampshire," his father snapped.
"I hope Wilkinson's successor has turned out well," Guy ventured, in the hope that such a direct challenge would force a discharge of grievances. Surprizingly, however, his father talked without covert reproaches of the successor's virtues, of the field-club he had started, of his popularity with the boys and of the luck which had brought him along at such short notice. At any rate, thought Guy, he could not be blamed for having caused any inconvenience to the school by his refusal to take up office at Fox Hall. The constraint of the long drive came to an end with the first view of Plashers Mead, at which his father gazed with the sort of mixture of resentment, interest and alarm he might have displayed at the approach of a novel insect.
"It looks as if it would be very damp," was his only comment.