divorced the parental Benham. He arrived dressed very neatly in a
brown suit that had only one fault, it had not the remotest
suggestion of having been made for him. It fitted his body fairly
well, it did annex his body with only a few slight
incompatibilities, but it repudiated his hands and face. He had a
conspicuously old Gladstone bag and a conspicuously new despatch
case, and he had forgotten black ties and dress socks and a hair
brush. He arrived in the late afternoon, was met by Benham, in
tennis flannels, looking smartened up and a little unfamiliar, and
taken off in a spirited dog-cart driven by a typical groom. He met
his host and hostess at dinner.

Sir Godfrey was a rationalist and a residuum. Very much of him, too
much perhaps, had gone into the acquirement and perfect performance
of the caecal operation; the man one met in the social world was
what was left over. It had the effect of being quiet, but in its
unobtrusive way knobby. He had a knobby brow, with an air about it
of having recently been intent, and his conversation was curiously
spotted with little knobby arrested anecdotes. If any one of any
distinction was named, he would reflect and say, "Of course,--ah,
yes, I know him, I know him. Yes, I did him a little service--in
'96."

And something in his manner would suggest a satisfaction, or a
dissatisfaction with confidential mysteries.

He welcomed Billy Prothero in a colourless manner, and made
conversation about Cambridge. He had known one or two of the higher
dons. One he had done at Cambridge quite recently. "The inns are
better than they are at Oxford, which is not saying very much, but