“Ah, there you are, Hugh!” he said cordially. “How are you? What burglarious entry! And what’s the damage?”
“I seem to have upset some little beans,” said Hugh. “I sat down on half the saucer, so the rest tipped up.”
“Better than that you should tip up,” said his brother-in-law. “It was only some of those new lupins I was going to sow. All gone on the lawn, have they? It is of no consequence. Luckily I have some more, and I will put them to soak and sow them to-morrow instead. ‘That shall be to-morrow, not to-night.’ Rather neat, eh? Browning.”
Hugh gingerly but successfully accomplished the task of getting through the window into the room. Somehow, if his brother-in-law had said, “You clumsy brute, how beastly careless you are!” he would have felt less blamed than being not blamed at all in this Christian manner.
“And how’s Agnes?” he said, shaking hands.
“Very well, and as busy as we all are down here. She said she would very likely be late for tea, and told us not to wait.”
“I hope I haven’t interrupted you at—at anything,” said Hugh, unable for the moment to remember the names of things that made the Canon so busy.
“Not in the least. I had finished my paper, and perhaps you have saved me from the fate of idle hands. Shall we go out and have tea in the garden? It is cooler, I think, out of doors.”
“And there seems to be less of a gale out of doors than in your study,” remarked Hugh. “But you always like living in a Temple of the Winds.”
The Canon smiled approvingly; anything suggestive of a classical allusion always pleased him, though exactly how he would have reconciled his love for the classics with the view he had so pointedly expressed to-day that all art to be immortal must be religious would perhaps have puzzled him. But he had arrived at an age and a dignity which put him generally beyond the risk of being asked awkward questions. Hugh, however, sometimes asked things which his brother-in-law felt sure he would understand when he was older, and they occasionally had what the Canon called “great arguments” together.