Godfrey managed to be late again, and only reached home five minutes after his father, who had bicycled instead of walking from the station as he supposed that he would do.
"I forgot to give orders about your lunch," said Mr. Knight tentatively. "I hope that you managed to get some."
"Oh, yes, Father; that is, I lunched out, at the Hall."
"Indeed! I did not know that Sir John had arrived."
"No, he hasn't; at least I have not seen him. I lunched with Isobel."
"Indeed!" remarked Mr. Knight again, and the subject dropped.
Next day, Godfrey, once more arrayed in his best clothes, attended the prize-giving and duly was made to look foolish, only getting home just in time for dinner, after which his father requested him to check certain examination papers. Then came Sunday and church at which Isobel did not appear; two churches in fact, and after these a tea party to the churchwardens and their wives, to whom Godfrey was expected to explain the wonders of the Alps. Before it was over, if he could have managed it, these stolid farmers with their families would have lain at the bottom of the deepest moraine that exists amid those famous mountains. But there they were, swallowing tea and munching cake while they gazed on him with ox-like eyes, and he plunged into wild explanations as to the movements of glaciers.
"Something like one of them new-fangled machines what carry hay up on to the top of stacks," said Churchwarden No. 1 at length.
"Did you ever sit on a glacier while it slided from the top to the bottom of a mountain, Master Godfrey, and if so, however did you get up again?" asked Churchwarden No. 2.
"Is a glacier so called after the tradesman what cuts glass, because glass and ice are both clear-like?" inquired Churchwarden No. 1, filled with sudden inspiration.
Then Godfrey, in despair, said that he thought it was and fled away, only to be reproached afterwards by his father for having tried to puzzle those excellent and pious men.
On Monday his luck was better, since Mr. Knight was called away immediately after lunch to take a funeral in a distant parish of which the incumbent was absent at the seaside. Godfrey, by a kind of instinct, sped at once to the willow log by the stream, where, through an outreaching of the long arm of coincidence, he found Isobel seated. After casually remarking that the swallows were flying neither high nor low that day, but as it were in mid-air, she added that she had not seen him for a long while.