“It must be dreadfully hard at times,” I put in.  “You had quite a long sail to get here, didn’t you?  And isn’t it perfectly awful in winter?”

“I have been carried out to sea, and things have looked rather badly sometimes,” he said, deprecatingly.  “But one must expect a little trouble now and then, you know.”

Daddy began to ask him questions.  You know how he prides himself on his ability to turn people inside out, as he expresses it.  The poor little man answered, slowly, smiling blandly all the time and looking quite unfit, physically, to face the perils of such a hard life.  I became persuaded that under that frail exterior there must be a heart full of strength to endure, of determination to carry out that which he considers to be his duty.

“You know I really am afraid I’m a dreadful coward,” he suddenly confessed.  “I have been rather badly frightened some times.”

“My father was the bravest man I ever knew,” said Daddy, “and he acknowledged that he was scared half to death whenever he went into battle, during the war.  Yet he was several times promoted for gallantry in the field.  I feel quite sure that you must have deserved similar advancement, more than once.”

Mr. Barnett looked at him, doubtfully, and with a funny little frightened air.

“I am afraid you must be chaffing me,” he said, with a tentative smile.

“No, sir, I am not,” clamored Daddy.  “Bravery lies in facing the odds, when you have to, and putting things through regardless of one’s fears.  The chap who never gets scared hasn’t enough brains to know danger.”

The uneasy look of the parson’s face gave way to a pleased expression.

It was interesting to watch Daddy getting at all the facts, as he calls it, and I suppose that it is a precious talent.  In the shortest possible time he knew the birth rate, the chief family histories, the rates for the transportation of codfish to the remotest parts of the world, and how many barrels of flour it took to keep a large family alive for one year, besides a few hundred other things.

During a lull I asked Mr. Barnett whether he would have some tea.  Your cultivated taste is the one I have followed as regards this beverage, and I have an ample provision.  Before the full-flavored North China infusion, which I kept out of Susie’s devastating hands, and the little biscuits coming from the most British-looking tin box, I saw the Reverend Basil Barnett, late of Magdalen, gradually becoming permeated by a sense of something that had long been missing from his life.  When he first caught the aroma he looked incredulous, then his features relaxed in the smile of the expert utterly satisfied.

“Mrs. Barnett and I are exceedingly fond of tea,” he said, after I had compelled him to let me fill his cup for the third time.

To-morrow I shall discover some manner of making the dear woman accept a pound or two of it.  The appreciation of her spouse made me think of some lion-hearted, little, strenuous lady with an inveterate tea-habit.  Can you understand such a confused statement?  I realize that it is badly jumbled.  At any rate he held his cup daintily, with three fingers, and looked at it as Daddy looks at a glass of his very special Chateau-Larose.