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call?’
    â€˜The latter, my dear Miss Sarah. Most emphatically the latter.’ He laughed again, more happily, recognizing the banter. ‘I’m sure you’re in no need of my professional services.’
    â€˜That,’ retorted Sarah, ‘is a very rash statement. Really, Mr Pardew, I’m surprised at you. I cannot answer for my little sister,’ she continued with mock-gravity, provoking a grimace from Catherine, ‘but as for myself, I assure you I sometimes have thoughts that would surprise you.’
    â€˜That I can well believe,’ said Mr Pardew gallantly. ‘And how privileged I should be if you would share them with me.’ With a sudden change of tone, his smile giving place to a look of ingenuous admiration, ‘I know you are exceedingly clever,’ he said, ‘as well as …’ Seeking for a word less daring than the one he had in mind, he failed to find it, so left the sentence unfinished.
    Mr Pardew was a tall young man, stalwart, athletic, with well-modelled regular features, a head of vigorous fair hair, and an unblemished complexion. The startling cleanliness of his appearance, a cleanliness that was somehow moral as well as physical, suggested to Sarah a diet of cold baths and carbolic soap. But for his bovine eyes, and an excess of earnestness in his manner, he would have been—and by many, indeed, was—accounted handsome. Sarah, though she laughed at him, was more kindly disposed towards him than she would have admitted. Her sense of his absurdity, which often amused but sometimes exasperated her, was at war with her recognition of his masculine attractions. The exasperation was perhaps significant, though not to her. She felt it to bea wicked waste that good looks should have been bestowed on a young man whom it was impossible to take seriously.
    â€˜You are very polite,’ said Sarah, helping him out, ‘though I’m not sure you mean it as a compliment.’ She wished he would go, and to prevent his perceiving the wish went on talking. ‘Have you brought us some nice tit-bits of gossip from the village? It must be so interesting to be a clergyman and have everyone tell you their secrets. But of course you wouldn’t tell us, it wouldn’t be proper. Your lips are sealed, like my father’s. And we shouldn’t listen if you did, should we, Kitty?’
    â€˜Of course not,’ said Catherine. ‘We should stop our ears and run from the room.’
    Studying their grave faces, ‘I rather think you’re making fun of me,’ said Mr Pardew, with a puzzled, inquiring smile. ‘I hope so, I’m sure,’ he went on earnestly. ‘Because, you know, we don’t normally hear confessions in our Anglican Communion. That is a Roman practice.’
    If his simplicity was sometimes embarrassing, his good nature was disarming. Sarah repented of her well-meant frivolity, and finding nothing unfrivolous to say merely murmured assent and waited, hoping that some more fruitful subject would turn up. Catherine’s eyes, in the silence that followed, strayed back to her book, furtively desirous. She contrived to read a line or two in a detached manner, as if by accident, while still maintaining an attitude of polite attention.
    Mr Pardew cleared his throat. He shifted a little in his chair. Meeting Sarah’s glance of inquiry he smiledpainfully and remarked, for the second time, on the beauty of the day.
    â€˜It’s almost,’ he said, ‘a shame to be indoors, don’t you think, Miss Sarah?’
    â€˜Would you like to take a turn in the garden?’ Sarah asked.
    â€˜Indeed yes. I should enjoy that.’ He rose eagerly and stood hovering at Sarah’s elbow. ‘I wondered, I half-wondered, Miss Sarah, if I might venture to propose a game of croquet?’
    â€˜Of course, if you like,’ said Sarah, dissembling her surprise.
    â€˜But perhaps it is a little cold for