"It may be that you achieve a certain degree of spiritual enlightenment in producing a book entitled 'The Purple Kangaroo.' I hope so, though I have not read it. Nor do I wholly agree with your good aunt, who contends that the title savours too much of the Apocrypha, and I say nothing of the undesirable popularity you seem to have attained in the United States. I only ask you to come home.
"As a proof of her reconciliation, your aunt included a copy of your book in her last mission box to the Ojibway Indians. I shall always be glad to receive and make welcome any of your friends at the palace, no matter how different their tastes and principles may be to my own well-defined course of action.
"In the hope of better things,
"Your affectionate Father."
"Of course you'll go," Violet said softly.
"Oh, I don't know about that," he replied.
"I do," she returned. "It's your duty. What a dear old chap he must be!—so thoroughly prosy and honest. I'm sure I should love him. I know just the sort of man he is. A downright Nonconformist minister of the midland counties, who was consecrated a Bishop by mistake."
Cecil paused a minute, thinking it over.
"How about the others?" he said.
"Ah, yes," she replied, "the others. But perhaps you don't class them as your friends."