The preoccupation of them all, was Canon Morchard.
“It’ll be less bad if you tell him yourself than if Radly does,” Owen Quentillian pointed out.
“Of course, it makes it much worse having told him a lie,” Val said crudely, “but perhaps he didn’t much notice what you said. I’m sure he thought it was Owen, all the time.”
How much better if it had been Owen, if it had been any one of them, save the Canon’s best-loved child, his youngest son!
“You must come and tell him at once,” Lucilla decreed—but not hopefully.
“I can’t. You know what he said about a liar and a coward under his roof.”
Adrian cried and shivered.
“He wasn’t angry the time I broke the clock,” said Flora. “He took me on his knee and only just talked to me. I didn’t mind a bit.”
“But you hadn’t told a story,” said the inexorable Val.
They all knew that there lay the crux of the matter.