“And did you explain that to Father?” Lucilla inquired, not without a certain dismay in picturing the Canon’s reception of these strange ideals.
“More or less; but you know what he is. He always does most of the talking himself. I can quite understand why we were so frightened of him as kids, you know. He seems to work himself up about things, and then he always has such a frightfully high-faluting point of view. We might really have been talking at cross-purposes, half the time.”
“I can quite believe it.”
“Of course, I’m not exactly afraid of him now, but it does make it a bit difficult to say what’s in one’s mind.”
“That’s just the pity of it, Adrian. He always says that he does so wish you were more unreserved with him. He does very much want you to say what’s in your mind.”
“But he wouldn’t like it if I did—in fact, he probably wouldn’t understand it.”
Few things could be more incontrovertible.
“The fact is that father has quite a wrong idea of me. He seems to expect me to have all the notions that he had, when he was a young high-brow at Oxford, about ninety years ago. As I told him, things have gone ahead a bit since then.”
Lucilla, for her consolation, reflected that few people are capable of distinguishing accurately between what they actually say, and what they subsequently wish themselves to have said, when reporting a conversation. It was highly probable that Adrian had been a good deal less eloquent than he represented himself to have been.
“You didn’t say anything, did you, about your idea of taking Orders?”