Ishmael found Boase lying on the long chair in his study, that for him always held something, some smell or atmosphere of the mind, that carried him back to his childhood.  He felt in the midst of the old days again at once, when he was not looking at Boase, who was grown very old, his once rather square face and blunt features having taken on a transparency of texture that was in itself ageing, while his hair, sparse about the big brow, was a creamy white like froth.  Boase called to Ishmael, recognising his step, to take off his wet things in the hall, for it was raining hard, with that whole-hearted rain of the West which when it begins seems as though it could never stop again.  That was a wet summer, when the stalks of the growing harvest were flattened to the earth and the corn sprouted green in the ear and the hay rotted on the ground before ever it could be carried.  Ishmael had to be careful about getting wet since that night when he had run to the burning of Angwin’s ricks, and he did not scorn the Parson’s offer of a pair of shabby old slippers that lurked under the hall chair for just such occasions as this.

It seemed to Ishmael that if he had not been feeling such a different being himself he might have been a little boy again and time never have moved on from the days when he lived here with the Parson and did his lessons in this room.  Outside the shrubs bent before the rainy wind, as they had done so many times before his childish eyes; the scrap of lawn visible between them showed as sopping and as green; the fuchsia had grown bigger; but its purple and scarlet blossoms, so straightly pendant, each held a drop of clear water at the tip, as they had ever done in weather such as this.  Within the room might be a little fuller, a little smaller, whether owing to the Parson’s untidiness, with which the new housekeeper could not cope as well as had old Mrs. Tippet, long dead, or whether to the shrinking that takes place in rooms after childhood is passed, Ishmael could not have told.  Three walls were still lined with dusty golden-brown books that he had been wont to describe as smelling of bad milk pudding, and the shabby green tablecloth was littered with sermon paper and more books just as it had been for his lessons.  He almost expected to see Vassie’s golden head, no more alien from him than his own boyish dark one, bending over it as he looked.

Boase held out a thin hand to him, laying down the book he had been reading, after slipping a marker in the place.  Ishmael saw it was a new book from the library.  “Robert Elsmere” was the name upon its cover.

“What good thing has happened?” asked Boase, watching Ishmael’s face.

“Padre, you are too clever; if you had lived a few centuries earlier you would certainly have been burned alive!  Nicky is coming home.”

“That is splendid news!  He has been away quite long enough to be good.”

“For him?”

“No, for you.  You are getting stodgy, Ishmael.”