“No, Rosamund, I can’t let that pass.  It’s not like yours yet.  I say nothing about mine.  But I honestly think it’s modified and I hope the Dean will pass it.”

“The Dean and I are great cronies!” she murmured doubtfully.  “My only fear is that after he is a verger Mr. Thrush may—­may lapse if I’m not——­”

She stopped, looking at Dion, and again he thought that she was more sensitive to his opinion, to his wishes, than she had formerly been.  Her slightly changed attitude made Dion gladly aware of change in himself.  He meant more to Rosamund now than he had meant when he left England.

CHAPTER VII

Three days had slipped by.  Dion had been accepted as one of the big Welsley family, had been made free of the Precincts.  During those three days he had forgotten London, business, everything outside of Welsley.  It had seemed to him that he had the right to forget, and he had exercised it.  Robin had played a great part in those three days.  His new adoration of his father was obvious to every one who saw them together.  The soldier appealed to the little imagination.  Robin’s ardor was concentrated for the moment in his pride of possession.  He owned a father who—­his own nurse had told him so—­was not as other fathers, not as ordinary fathers such as stumped daily about the narrow streets of Welsley, rubicund and, many of them, protuberant in the region of the watch-chain.  They were all very well; Robin had nothing against them; many of them were clergymen and commanded his respect by virtue of their office, their gaiters, the rosettes and cords that decorated their wide-winged hats.  But they were not like “Fa.”  They had not become lean, and muscular, and dark, and quick-limbed, and keen-eyed, and spry, in the severe service of their country.  They had not—­even the Archdeacon, Robin’s rather special pal, had not—­ever killed any wicked men who did not like England, or gone into places where wicked men who did not like England might have killed them.  Some of them did not know much about guns, did not seem to take any interest in guns.  It was rather pitiable.  Since his father had come back Robin had had an opportunity of sounding the Archdeacon on the subject of an advance in open order.  The result had not been satisfactory.  The Archdeacon, Robin thought, had taken the matter with a lightness, almost a levity, which one could not have looked for from a man in his position, and when questioned as to his methods of taking over had frankly said that he had none.

“I like him,” Robin said ruefully.  “But he’ll never be a good scout, will he, Fa?”

To which Dion replied with discretion.

“There are plenty of good scouts, old boy, who would never make good archdeacons.”

“Is there?” said Robin.  “Why not?  I know what scouts does, but what does archdeacons does?”

And with that he had his father stumped.  Dion had not been long enough at Welsley to dive into all its mysteries.