“Bertram says they have a little house in—Peckham.”
Canon Spratte jumped up, and an expression of real disgust passed over his face.
“Revolting!” he cried, “I wish to hear nothing more about it.”
He walked towards the door, but Winnie stopped him.
“Papa, don’t go. Don’t be angry with me. You do love me; and I love you, next to Bertram, better than any one in the world.”
Canon Spratte put aside her appealing hands.
“If you love me, Winnie, I don’t know how you can cause me such pain. Sophia and I will leave you to your own reflections. I can’t send you to your room as if you were a little girl, but this I must say: I think you ungrateful, disobedient, and unkind. It’s only from regard to your sex, and out of respect to the memory of your dead mother, that I don’t say, as well, that I consider you stupid and vulgar.”
Like a martyr, for none could assume more effectively than Theodore Spratte the appearance of outraged virtue, he stalked majestically from the room.
VII
A WEEK later Canon Spratte lunched with Mrs. Fitzherbert to meet Sir John Durant and his daughter. The eminent brewer was a stout gentleman of fifty, rubicund and good-humoured, with a gold watch-chain spread widely over his capacious paunch. The few hairs that remained to him were arranged at judicious intervals over a shining pate. His face was broad and merry. His little eyes were bright with hilarity, and when anything diverted him, he laughed all over his body. He was not tall, and his legs were disproportionately short, so that the slim, elegant Canon towered over him in a way that gratified the one without mortifying the other. Sir John’s appearance betokened great prosperity and a thorough satisfaction with the world at large. He knew that he made the best beer in England, and the British people knew it too, so he had good reason to be pleased with the state of things. He was a business man from top to toe, shrewd, blunt and outspoken, and he had no idea that there was anything disgraceful in his connection with trade.