Yes, Tommy was exasperating to him still as in the long ago, and Cathro said this maliciously, yet feeling that he did a risky thing, so convinced was he by old experience that you were getting in the way of a road-machine when you opposed Thomas Sandys.

“I wonder,” Tommy replied quietly.

The answer made a poor impression, and Cathro longed to go on.  “But he was always most dangerous when he was quiet,” he reflected uneasily, and checked himself in sheer funk.

Mr. Gloag came, as he thought, to Tommy’s defence.  “If Mr. Sandys questions,” he said heavily, “whether courage would have been vouchsafed to him at that trying hour, it is right and fitting that he should admit it with Christian humility.”

“Quite so, quite so,” Mr. James agreed, with heartiness.  He had begun to look solemn at the word “vouchsafed.”

“For we are differently gifted,” continued Mr. Gloag, now addressing his congregation.  “To some is given courage, to some learning, to some grace.  Each has his strong point,” he ended abruptly, and tucked reverently into the jam, which seemed to be his.

“If he would not have risked his life to save the boy,” Elspeth interposed hotly, “it would have been because he was thinking of me.”

“I should like to believe that thought of you would have checked me,” Tommy said.

“I am sure it would,” said Grizel.

Mr. Cathro was rubbing his hands together covertly, yet half wishing he could take her aside and whisper:  “Be canny; it’s grand to hear you, but be canny; he is looking most extraordinar meek, and unless he has cast his skin since he was a laddie, it’s not chancey to meddle with him when he is meek.”

The doctor also noticed that Grizel was pressing Tommy too hard, and though he did not like the man, he was surprised—­he had always thought her so fair-minded.

“For my part,” he said, “I don’t admire the unknown half so much for what he did as for his behaviour afterwards.  To risk his life was something, but to disappear quietly without taking any credit for it was finer and I should say much more difficult.”

“I think it was sweet of him,” Grizel said.

“I don’t see it,” said Tommy, and the silence that followed should have been unpleasant to him; but he went on calmly:  “Doubtless it was a mere impulse that made him jump into the pool, and impulse is not courage.”  He was quoting Grizel now, you observe, and though he did not look at her, he knew her eyes were fixed on him reproachfully.  “And so,” he concluded, “I suppose Captain Ure knew he had done no great thing, and preferred to avoid exaggerated applause.”

Even Elspeth was troubled; but she must defend her dear brother.  “He would have avoided it himself,” she explained quickly.  “He dislikes praise so much that he does not understand how sweet it is to smaller people.”