Not absolutely silent of course: but silentish! Coming back from the parson's, where they had dropped the little London sewer rat, they had talked very little. . . . Not unpleasant people the parson's: an uncle of the girl's: three girl cousins, not unpleasant, like the girl but without the individuality . . . A remarkably good bite of beef: a truly meritorious Stilton and a drop of whisky that proved the parson to be a man. All in candlelight. A motherly mother of the family to take the rat up some stairs . . . a great deal of laughter of girls . . . then a re-start an hour later than had been scheduled. . . . Well, it hadn't mattered: they had the whole of eternity before them: the good horse—really it was a good horse!—putting its shoulders into the work. . . .
They had talked a little at first; about the safeness of the London girl from the police now; about the brickishness of the parson in taking her in. She certainly would never have reached Charing Cross by train. . . .
There had fallen long periods of silences. A bat had whirled very near their off-lamp.
"What a large bat!" she had said. "Noctilux major. . ."
He said:
"Where do you get your absurd Latin nomenclature from? Isn't it phalœna . . ." She had answered:
"From White . . . The Natural History of Selborne is the only natural history I ever read. . . ."
"He's the last English writer that could write," said Tietjens.
"He calls the downs 'those majestic and amusing mountains,'" she said. "Where do you get your dreadful Latin pronunciation from? Phal . . . i . . . i . . . na! To rhyme with Dinah!"
"It's 'sublime and amusing mountains,' not 'majestic and amusing,'" Tietjens said. "I got my Latin pronunciation, like all public schoolboys of to-day, from the German."