Quentillian, with great precision, folded the sheets together again.
“So Lucilla is a home-bird, Valeria is still something of a madcap, Flora is still ‘little Flora,’ and Adrian is a dear lad who is anxious to decide rightly about his future career.”
He wondered doubtfully whether he himself would come to endorse the Canon’s opinion of the Canon’s progeny.
And what was the Canon himself, if labels were to be thus distributed?
The sensation of doubt in Quentillian’s mind was accentuated, but he concluded his reflections by reminding himself, half tolerantly, and half with a certain grimness, that the Canon was at least, according to himself, Quentillian’s ever affectionate Fenwick Morchard.
(ii)
“This is like old times,” said Quentillian.
Lucilla Morchard smiled, shook hands with him, and made no answer, and Quentillian immediately, and with annoyance, became conscious that the occasion was not in the least like old times.
Apparently Miss Morchard did not accept clichés uncritically.
Her face, indeed, expressed a spirit both critical and perceptive. Quentillian could still trace the schoolgirl Lucilla in the clearly-cut, unbeautiful oval, with the jaw slightly underhung, grey, short-sighted eyes, and straight black brows. Her dark hair was folded plainly beneath her purple straw hat, but he could discern that there was all the old abundance of it. Her figure was tall and youthful, but her face made her look fully her age. He surmised that Lucilla must be thirty-five, now.