"He does!" said Mr. Sandys enthusiastically--"that's what he always says. Do you know, if you won't think me very vain, Howard, I believe he gets that from me. Maud is different--she takes after her dear mother--whose loss was so irreparable a calamity--my dear wife was full of imagination; it was a beautiful mind. I will show you some of her sketches when you come to see us--I am looking forward to that--not much technique, perhaps, but a real instinct for beauty; to be just, a little lacking in form, but full of feeling. Well, Jack, as I was saying, likes reality. So do I! A firm hold on reality--that's the best thing; I was not intellectual enough for the life of thought, and I fell back on humanity--vastly engrossing! I assure you, though you would hardly think it, that even these simple people down here are most interesting: no two of them alike. My old friends say to me sometimes that I must find country people very dull, but I always say, 'No two of them alike!' Of course I try to keep my intellectual tastes alive--they are only tastes, of course, not faculties, like yours--but we read and talk and ventilate our ideas, Maud and I; and when we are tired of books, why I fall back on the great book of humanity. We don't stagnate--at least I hope not--I have a horror of stagnation. I said so to the Archdeacon the other day, and he said that there was nothing stagnant about Windlow." "No, I am quite sure there is not," said Howard politely. "It's very good of you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly. "Really quite a compliment! And I assure you, you don't know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed. Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is a vast improvement on the old type of don, if I may say so. I'm very free, you see! And so you think Jack might do well in commerce? Well, I quite approve. All I want is that he should not be out of touch with human beings. I'm not a metaphysician, but it seems to me that that is what we are here for--touch with humanity--of course on Church of England lines. I'm tolerant, I hope, and can see the good side of other creeds; but give me something comprehensive, and that is the glory of our English Church. Well, you have given me a lot to think of, Howard; I must just take it all away and think it over. It's well to do that, I think? Not to be in a hurry, try to see all round a question? That is my line always!"