As
he stood there, leaning on his stick, smiling at them, there did seem a
great deal of the child about him, and Brandon, Ponting and Ronder
suddenly seemed old, wicked and soiled in the world's ways.
"Please forgive me," he said, "for not being down when you came. I move
slowly now.... Luncheon is ready, I know. Shall we go in?"
The four men crossed the stone-flagged hall into the diningroom where
Appleford stood, devoutly, as one about to perform a solemn rite. The
dining-room was high-ceilinged with a fireplace of old red brick fronted
with black oak beams. The walls were plain whitewash, and they carried
only one picture, a large copy of Duerer's "Knight and the Devil." The
high, broad windows looked out on to the sloping lawn whose green now
danced and sparkled under the sun. The trees that closed it in were purple
shadowed.
They sat, clustered together, at the end of a long oak refectory table.
The Bishop himself was a teetotaler, but there was good claret and, at the
end, excellent port. The only piece of colour on the table was a bowl of
dark-blue glass piled with fruit.
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