“And Polkinghorne major?  D’you know anything about him?  Did he get into his Highland regiment?”

“I heard about him at St. Renny from the old bird.  I stopped there last night, you know, to break this devil of a journey.  I tell you, Ishmael, it’s less of a business getting over to Paris than down here.”

“What did Old Tring say about everyone?  How was he?”

“Just the same, only thinner on top and fatter below.  He told me about Polkinghorne.  He went to Italy the year you left, you know.  Well, Old Tring told me while he was still there the war broke out, and he enlisted under Garibaldi and was killed in a skirmish just when peace was settled.”

There was a second of silence—­not because Ishmael had any feeling for Polkinghorne beyond a pleasant liking, but because it was the first time the thought of death as an actuality instead of a dreamlike hypothesis had ever struck home to him.  Then he said:  “Poor old Polkinghorne ... but he was hardly older than us.  It doesn’t seem possible anyone like us can be dead....”

He pushed the thought away from him and soon was listening to Killigrew’s tales of Paris, some of which were so obviously meant to startle him that he kept to himself the fact that they succeeded.  Awkwardness died between them, and when he turned in up the new drive—­still only half-made, but the whole scheme of it clear—­Ishmael could glow at the other’s admiration of his home.

If he could show off Cloom without a qualm, however, it was not the same when it came to displaying his family, and never had he been so thankful for Vassie’s beauty as when he saw Killigrew’s notice of it.  And how that beauty glowed for Killigrew!  Even a brother’s eyes could not but admire.  Phoebe sat unnoticed, her charm swamped in that effulgence.  Annie’s querulous remarks faded through sheer pride into silence.  The Parson, a welcome addition, arrived for supper; greasy Tonkin, inevitable though not so greatly a source of pleasure, drove over from Penzance and sat absorbing Vassie, so to speak, at every pore.

Supper was going off well, thought Ishmael, as he watched Killigrew eat and laugh, and listened to his talk that could not have been more animated—­so reflected Ishmael in his relief—­if Vassie had been a duchess.  Under the brightness the tension, so common to that room that it had become part of it, evaporated, and yet what, after all, was it that achieved this miracle?  Nothing in the world but ordinary social intercourse between young and gay people who met as equals, intercourse such as poor Ishmael had never known under his own roof before....  And they all made a fuss of him:  John-James actually said something approving, if difficult to follow, about his farming; Vassie beamed on him not only for his friend’s sake; the Parson drew him out—­he felt himself a host, and responded to the sensation.