Mr. Williams laughed heartily. "They'd like to turn us all out," he said. "But we won't _be_ turned out--not without a struggle. I don't think there's much wrong with the system either, and I'd rather see young Denis Rector of Surley than one of Father Brill's communities there." "Oh, so would I," said Ella, "and I hope my uncle will make him. He's old for his years already, and every day he'll get older." "Do you think the Bishop will appoint him?" asked Mr. Williams. "I don't know," she said. "If I knew I'd say so. But I do know that whatever he does it won't be because he's afraid of what people will say about him." CHAPTER III IN THE GARDEN They went back to the tennis courts after tea, but there were not enough of them to make up two sets, the Breezy Bills having left on their bicycles, followed by a trail of Airedales. "Come and look at the rock-garden," said Caroline to Maurice Bradby. The young man brightened visibly. He had sat silent during the conversation at the tea table, as he generally sat silent in company, being too diffident to put forward his views in a general conversation. But he had views of his own on many subjects, and those who took the trouble to elicit them often found them interesting. Caroline was one of these. She was no older than he, but had seen so much more of the world and its inhabitants that her feeling towards him was almost maternal. He was not like the young men whom she had met in such shoals in London ball-rooms and in country houses, not one of whom, however they might differ in character and tastes, but had done and known many of the things that she had. Bradby was the son of a clergyman, and had left his provincial Grammar-school for a stool in a provincial bank, to be released from it after four years of unhappy confinement for the country life after which his soul had always hankered. The country was a passion with him, and Caroline had penetrated some of his depths at an early stage, when the rest of the family were only in the state of finding him uncommonly heavy in hand, because his upbringing had not trained him to respond to the easy intimacy which they offered to all whom they thought worthy of it, and had offered to him on his introduction to them under Worthing's wing. Caroline, sweet and kind to all who seemed to need helping in the world, had taken more trouble about him than the rest, but they had all come to accept him by this time for what he was. It was no longer awkward to have him sitting silent while talk flowed high all about him; they knew him too well to be obliged to drag him into it out of politeness, or for one of them to detach herself to talk to him. And it was only in talk that he was backward. If there was anything to do he was a stand-by,--clever and capable and interested. All of them liked him very well, but only Caroline had come to be unaffected by his dissimilarity from type.