It would be
absurd to say that he had to get home, because they would ask him where
he lived, and at this hour of the morning he could scarcely pretend that
he expected to be back in time for lunch twelve miles and more from
where he was.
"Of course he's going to stay," said the old lady.
And of course Mark did stay; a delightful lunch it was too, on chairs
covered with blue holland in a green shadowed room that smelt of dryness
and ancientry. After lunch Mark sat for a while with the Vicar in his
study, which was small and intimate with its two armchairs and
bookshelves reaching to the ceiling all round. He had not yet managed to
find out his name, and as it was obviously too late to ask as this stage
of their acquaintanceship he supposed that he should have to wait until
he left the Vicarage and could ask somebody in the village, of which by
the way he also did not know the name.
"Lidderdale," the Vicar was saying meditatively, "Lidderdale. I wonder
if you were a relative of the famous Lidderdale of St. Wilfred's?"
Mark flushed with a mixture of self-consciousness and pleasure to hear
his father spoken of as famous, and when he explained who he was he
flushed still more deeply to hear his father's work praised with such
enthusiasm.
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