“No.” It really doesn’t matter what my father is, thought Edwin, and the Dean, as though answering his reflection, said:— “No. . . That doesn’t matter.” And, after a pause: “Well, Mr. . . . er . . . Ingleby, you have made a good beginning. I hope it will continue satisfactorily. That is all, thank you. Good-morning.” He held out his hand to Edwin, who was astonished into putting out a moist hand himself. “Yes,” continued the Dean in a suave, reflective voice, “you will pay your fees to my secretary, Mr. Hadley. This is . . . er . . . Mr. Hadley. Yes.” Mr. Hadley acknowledged the introduction with a lift of the right eyebrow and Edwin left the room. “Mr. Martin,” said the secretary, as he left, and “Mr. Martin, please,” the porter repeated. “I say, wait a moment for me,” said the loose-limbed Irishman to Edwin in passing. It was so friendly as to be cheering. “He seems a decent old bird,” said Martin, emerging a few minutes later. “I thought you said he was your cousin?” “So he is. You see I’m Irish, and so is he; and in Ireland pretty nearly everybody who is anybody is related to everybody else.” He plunged into a lengthy demonstration of the relationships of the Southern aristocracy, with warnings as to the gulfs that separated the Martins from the Martyns, and the Plunketts from the Plunkets, rambling away through a world of high-breeding and penury in which all the inhabitants called each other by their Christian names, and spent their lives in hunting, point-to-point racing, and elaborate practical jokes. A new world to Edwin. They strolled down Sackville Row together, and cutting through the Arcades came out into the wide thoroughfare of Queen Street that had been driven through an area of slums in honour of Victoria’s first jubilee. “By the way, what’s your school?” said Denis Martin. “St. Luke’s.” “Never heard of it.” “I don’t suppose you would, in Ireland.” “Oh, I didn’t go to school in Ireland. Nobody does. I was at Marlborough. Is St. Luke’s one of those soccer schools?” “Good Lord, no. . . . We play rugger. We’re pretty good.” “Who do you play?” “Merchant Taylors and St. Paul’s, and one or two others.” “H’m. . . . They’re day schools, aren’t they? Is St. Luke’s that sort?” Edwin, with enthusiasm, expounded the St. Luke’s legend, that nobody outside of St. Luke’s has ever been known to believe. Martin, meanwhile, looked a little supercilious and bored. He spoke as from a distant world in a tone that implied that the people of North Bromwich could never call each other by their Christian names or hunt or race or play practical jokes with an air of being born to it. “I expect we’re a pretty mixed lot here,” he said. And Edwin, with the guilty consciousness of being more than a little mixed himself, replied: “Yes.” “An extraordinary collection. That great dark fellow looks an absolute tyke. Then there’s the chap with the waistcoat—” “Yes. . . . Harrop was the name.”