’I say, you’re very late!  There’ll be no getting a decent seat, if you don’t mind.  Leave Sir Job till afterwards.’

‘The statue somehow disappoints me,’ observed his father, placidly.

‘Oh, it isn’t bad, I think,’ returned the youth, in a voice not unlike his father’s, save for a note of excessive self-confidence.  He looked about eighteen; his comely countenance, with its air of robust health and habitual exhilaration, told of a boyhood passed amid free and joyous circumstances.  It was the face of a young English plutocrat, with more of intellect than such visages are wont to betray; the native vigour of his temperament had probably assimilated something of the modern spirit.  ‘I’m glad,’ he continued, ’that they haven’t stuck him in a toga, or any humbug of that sort.  The old fellow looks baggy, but so he was.  They ought to have kept his chimney-pot, though.  Better than giving him those scraps of hair, when everyone knows he was as bald as a beetle.’

‘Sir Job should have been granted Caesar’s privilege,’ said Mr Warricombe, with a pleasant twinkle in his eyes.

‘What was that?’ came from the son, with abrupt indifference.

‘For shame, Buckland!’

’What do I care for Caesar’s privileges?  We can’t burden our minds with that antiquated rubbish nowadays.  You would despise it yourself, father, if it hadn’t got packed into your head when you were young.’

The parent raised his eyebrows in a bantering smile.

’I have lived to hear classical learning called antiquated rubbish.  Well, well!—­Ha! there is Professor Gale.’

The Professor of Geology, a tall man, who strode over the pavement as if he were among granite hills, caught sight of the party and approached.  His greeting was that of a familiar friend; he addressed young Warricombe and his sister by their Christian names, and inquired after certain younger members of the household.  Mr Warricombe, regarding him with a look of repressed eagerness, laid a hand on his arm, and spoke in the subdued voice of one who has important news to communicate.

’If I am not much mistaken, I have chanced on a new species of homalonotus!’

‘Indeed!—­not in your kitchen garden, I presume?’

’Hardly.  Dr Pollock sent me a box of specimens the other day’—­

Buckland saw with annoyance the likelihood of prolonged discussion.

’I don’t know whether you care to remain standing all the afternoon,’ he said to his mother.  ’At this rate we certainly shan’t get seats.’

‘We will walk on, Martin,’ said the lady, glancing at her husband.

‘We come! we come!’ cried the Professor, with a wave of his arm.

The palaeontological talk continued as far as the entrance of the assembly hall.  The zest with which Mr. Warricombe spoke of his discovery never led him to raise his voice above the suave, mellow note, touched with humour, which expressed a modest assurance.  Mr Gale was distinguished by a blunter mode of speech; he discoursed with open-air vigour, making use now and then of a racy colloquialism which the other would hardly have permitted himself.