Then Sir Cradock Nowell, trying to seem quite calm and collected, addressed his visitor thus: “Sir, I am indebted to you for the honour of this visit. I apologize for receiving you in a room without a fire. Pray take a chair. I have no doubt that your intentions are kind towards me.” “I thank you,” replied the parson, speaking much faster than usual, and with the frill of his shirt–front rising; “I thank you, Sir Cradock Nowell; but I will not sit down in the house of a gentleman who declines to take my hand. I am here much against my own wishes, and only because I supposed that it was my duty to come. I am here on behalf of your son, a noble but most unfortunate youth, and now in great trouble of mind.” If he had only said “in great bodily danger,” it might have made a difference. “Your interest in him is very kind; and I trust that he will be grateful, which he never was to me. He has left his home in defiance of me. I can do nothing for him until he comes back, and is penitent. But surely the question concerns me rather than you, Mr. Rosedew.” “I am sorry to find,” answered John, quite calmly, “that you think me guilty of impertinent meddling. But even that I would bear, as becomes my age and my profession,”—here he gave Sir Cradock a glance, which was thoroughly understood, because they had been at school together,—”and more than that I would do, Cradock Nowell, for a man I have loved like you, sir.” That “sir” came out very oddly. John poked it in, as a retractation for having called him “Cradock Nowell,” and as a salve to his own self–respect, lest he should have been too appealing. And to follow up this view of the subject, he made a bow such as no man makes to one from whom he begs anything. But Sir Cradock Nowell lost altogether the excellence of the bow. The parson had put up his knee in a way which took the old man back to Sherborne. His mind was there playing cob–nut as fifty years since, with John Rosedew. Once more he saw the ruddy, and then pugnacious, John bringing his calf up, and priming his knee, for the cob–nut to lie upon it. This he always used to do, and not care a flip for the whack upon it, instead of using his blue cloth cap, as all the rest of the boys did; because his father and mother were poor, and could only afford him one cap in a year.