o
the most simple. He greeted the visitor very heartily, and offered to
take him over his new conservatory.

"My husband takes everyone to the new conservatory," said Mrs. Larcher,
laughing apologetically.

"It's the biggest round Ashford," explained the worthy man.

James, thinking he wished to talk of his son, consented, and as they
walked away, Mr. Larcher pointed out his fruit trees, his pigeons. He
was a fancier, said he, and attended to the birds entirely himself; then
in the conservatory, made James admire his orchids and the luxuriance of
his maidenhair.

"I suppose these sort of things grow in the open air at the Cape?" he
asked.

"I believe everything grows there."

Of his son he said absolutely nothing, and presently they rejoined the
others. The Larchers were evidently estimable persons, healthy-minded
and normal, but a little common. James asked himself why they had
invited him if they wished to hear nothing of their boy's tragic death.
Could they be so anxious to forget him that every reference was
distasteful? He wondered how Reggie had managed to grow up so simple,
frank, and charming amid these surroundings. There was a certain
pretentiousness about his people which caused them to escape complete
vulgarity only by a hair's-breadth. But they appeared anxious to make
much of James, and in his absence had explained who he was to the
remaining visitors, and these beheld him now with an awe which the hero
found rather comic.

Mrs. Larcher invited him to play tennis, and when he declined seemed
hardly to know what to do with him. Once when her younger daughter
laughed more loudly than usual at the very pointed chaff of the Imperial
Yeoman, she slightly frowned at her, with a scarcely perceptible but
significant glance in Jamie's direction. To her relief, however, the
conversation became general, and James found himself talking with Miss
Larcher of the cricket week at Canterbury.

After all, he could not be surprised at the family's general happiness.
Six months had passed since Reggie's death, and they could not remain
in perpetual mourning. It was very natural that the living should forget
the dead, otherwise life would be too horrible; and it was possibly only
the Larchers' nature to laugh and to talk more loudly than most people.
James saw that it was a united, affectionate household, homely and kind,
cursed with no particular depth of feeling; and if they had not resigned
themselves to the boy'