“He could get on well enough without any of us,” I thought to myself, wondering if this remoteness were inherited from the homesick Spanish ancestress. Yet I have seldom known a more superficially sociable man than Cranch. He had many talents, none of which perhaps went as far as he had once confidently hoped; but at least he used them as links with his kind instead of letting them seclude him in their jealous hold. He was always eager to show his sketches, to read aloud his occasional articles in the lesser literary reviews, and above all to play his new compositions to the musically-minded among us; or rather, since “eager” is hardly the term to apply to his calm balanced manner, I should say that he was affably ready to show off his accomplishments. But then he may have regarded doing so as one of the social obligations: I had felt from the first that, whatever Cranch did, he was always living up to some self-imposed and complicated standard. Even his way of taking off his hat struck me as the result of more thought than most people give to the act; his very absence of flourish lent it an odd importance. III It was the year of Harpledon’s first “jumble sale” that all these odds and ends of observation first began to connect themselves in my mind. Harpledon had decided that it ought to have a village hospital and dispensary, and Cranch was among the first to promise a subscription and to join the committee. A meeting was called at Mrs. Durant’s and after much deliberation it was decided to hold a village fair and jumble sale in somebody’s grounds; but whose? We all hoped Cranch would lend his garden; but no one dared to ask him. We sounded each other cautiously, before he arrived, and each tried to shift the enterprise to his neighbour; till at last Homer Davids, our chief celebrity as a painter, and one of the shrewdest heads in the community, said drily: “Oh, Cranch wouldn’t care about it.” “How do you know he wouldn’t?” some one queried. “Just as you all do; if not, why is it that you all want some one else to ask him?” Mrs. Durant hesitated. “I’m sure—” she began. “Oh, well, all right, then! _You_ ask him,” rejoined Davids cheerfully. “I can’t always be the one—” I saw her embarrassment, and volunteered: “If you think there’s enough shade in _my_ garden....” By the way their faces lit up I saw the relief it was to them all not to have to tackle Cranch. Yet why, having a garden he was proud of, need he have been displeased at the request?