CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH
Dorothy and I were having a chat about some designs in Treillage when Friswell sauntered into the garden, bringing with him a tine book on the Influence of Cimabue on the later work of Andrea del Castagno. He had promised to lend it to me, when in a moment of abstraction I had professed an interest in the subject.
Dorothy showed him her sketches of the new scheme, explaining that it was to act as a screen for fig-tree corner, where the material for a bonfire had been collecting for some time in view of the Peace that we saw in our visions of a new heaven and a new earth long promised to the sons of men.
Friswell was good enough to approve of the designs. He said he thought that Treillage would come into its own again before long. He always liked it, because somehow it made him think of the Bible.
I did not like that. I shun topics that induce thoughts of the Bible in Friswell's brain. He is at his worst when thinking and expressing his thoughts on the Bible, and the worst of his worst is that it is just then he makes himself interesting.
But how on earth Treillage and the Bible should become connected in any man's mind would pass the wit of man to explain. But when the appearance of my Temple compelled Friswell to think of Oxford Street, London, W., when his errant memory was carrying him on to the Princess's Theatre, on whose stage a cardboard thing was built—about as like my Temple as the late Temple of the Archdiocese of Canterbury was like the late Dr. Parker of the City Temple.
“I don't recollect any direct or mystical reference to Treillage in the Book,” said I, with a leaning toward sarcasm in my tone of voice. “Perhaps you saw something of the kind on or near the premises of the Bible Society.”