Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.

“I rather wish you hadn’t said all this, Rowsley.  It does no good:  not even if it were true.”

“Val, if it weren’t such a warm evening I’d get up and punch your head.  You’re a little too bright and good, aren’t you?  Yvonne Bendish says it, and she’s Laura’s sister.”

“Yvonne would say anything.  I wish you had given her a hint to hold her tongue.  She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets this gossip going.”

“It’ll set itself going,” said Rowsley.  “And, though I know the Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn’t care to tell Mrs. Jack not to gossip about her own sister.  You might see your way to it, reverend sir, but I don’t.”

“If it came to Bernard’s ears I wouldn’t answer for the consequences.”

“Won’t Bernard see it for himself?”

“If I thought that,” said Val, “if I thought that. . . .

“You couldn’t interfere, old man,” said Rowsley with a shrewd glance at his brother.  “Your hands are tied.”

“H’m:  yes, that’s true.”  It was much truer than Rowsley knew.  “I don’t care,” said Val, involuntarily crushing the paper in his hand:  “I would not let that stand in my way:  I’d speak to Hyde.”

“Are you prepared to take high ground?  I can’t imagine any one less likely to be amenable to moral suasion, unless of course you’re much more intimate with him than you ever let on to me.  Perhaps you are,” Rowsley added.  “He certainly is interested in you.”

“Hyde is?”

“Watches you like a cat after a mouse.  What’s at the root of it, Val?  Is it the original obligation you spoke of?  I’m not sure that I should care to be under an obligation to Hyde myself.  Hullo, are you off?” Val had risen, folding the newspaper, laying it carefully down on his chair:  in all his ways he was as neat as an old maid.

“I have to be at the managers’ meeting by half past eight, and it’s twenty past now.”

Watching his brother across the lawn, Rowsley cudgelled his brains to account for Val’s precipitate departure.  The pretext was valid, for Val was always punctual, and yet it looked like a retreat—­not to say a rout.  But what had he said to put Val to flight?

Present at the managers’ meeting were Val, still in breeches:  Jack Bendish in a dinner jacket and black tie:  Garrett the blacksmith, cursorily washed:  Thurlow, a leading Nonconformist tradesman:  and Mrs. Verney the doctor’s wife.  Agenda:  to instruct the Correspondent to requisition a new scrubbing brush for the Infants’ School.  This done and formally entered in the Minutes by Mrs. Verney, the meeting resolved itself into a Committee of Ways and Means for getting rid of the boys’ headmaster without falling foul of the National Union of Teachers; but these proceedings, though of extreme interest to all concerned, were recorded in no Minutes.