“Well,” he said, “what do you want to know?”
“Everything,” she answered. “I am possessed by a most unholy curiosity. Your relatives for instance, and where you were born.”
He shook his head.
“I have no relatives,” he answered. “I was born in Australia. I am an orphan, twenty-eight years old, and feel forty-eight, no profession, no settled purpose in life. I am Japhet in search of a career.”
She glanced at his shabby clothes. He had been to a mission-house in the East End.
“You are poor?” she asked softly.
“I have enough, more than enough,” he answered, “to live on.”
Her eyes lingered upon his clothes, but he offered no explanation. Enough to live on, she reflected, might mean anything!
“You say that you have no profession,” she remarked. “I suppose you would call it a vocation. But why did you want to come and preach to my villagers at Thorpe? Why didn’t you go into the Church if you cared for that sort of thing?”
“There was a certain amount of dogma in the way,” he answered. “I should make but a poor Churchman. They would probably call me a free-thinker. Besides, I wanted my independence.”