I did not agree —and since I knew that he didn’t either, I said so.

“The limit of the permissible,” he went on. “Yes, one soon arrives at it. Two hundred years ago the Vicar of Chipping Marton worked the land and fed his family. We clergy of today have not the time and probably not the skill. Yet to produce, to make grow, to create — that much I feel is allowable to a servant of the Creator. I have given my spare time to specialties with some success. You will find Gloxinia Rev. Matthew Gillon in most nurserymen’s catalogues, though I doubt if I made fifty pounds out of it. I grew tomatoes and strawberries for seed. Admiral Cunobel was unconvinced, but I was able materially to assist Benita in London until it appeared that the varieties which had been recommended to me were very subject to disease. I feel that Nur Jehan is in that category of innocent creation which I permit myself. My conscience insists that to keep so beautiful an animal at stud is a valuable service to the community.”

The real trouble was that Gillon never saw or couldn’t afford to see that capital was essential to consolidate the results of his industry. But, granted a run of luck, it might not have been. The admiral, though ribald, had never discouraged his parson until the arrival of Nur Jehan. At least strawberries and tomatoes could not career down the village street looking for affection, or roll luxuriously in an angry neighbor’s uncut hay.

Matthew Gillon was unnecessarily grateful and always very conscious that I might be sacrificing my interests to his affairs. He made a point of collecting nature notes from his parishioners in case they might be of use to me, and he pressed his daughter, who was very properly inarticulate about everything she really valued, to show me the secret places of her childhood.

Benita, however, rather resented my profession, since she ascribed to it the sudden fits of distraction which interrupted conversation. In any case she wasn’t interested in causes, only in effects. If you can catch with your pencil the essential mechanics of a bird’s wing and the subtle change of shading which marks on an open down the transition from one grass to another, mere words are dull and the microscope irrelevant.

She did sometimes condescend to pass on facts in the sort of voice which you would expect from a nymph surprised by a zoologist in dark glasses. One afternoon when her father and I were mucking out the stable and she was soaping leather, she remarked:

“There are squirrels in the Wen Acre Plantation if you want to watch them.”

The plantation was of mixed conifers and beech at the head of the dry valley where Benita and I had walked — an early and most successful experiment of the Forestry Commission which belonged to its countryside as honestly as any other Cotswold wood. It deserved to lose its artificial name and be called the Wen Acre Hanger.

“How blind we are!” Gillon exclaimed. “I have driven along that road once a week for eight years.”

I suggested that he was not likely to see squirrels from a car when passing along the upper end of the plantation.

“And anyway, Daddy,” Benita added, “they weren’t there last summer.”

“Weren’t they indeed? Well, the little imps have found the perfect home. Bless me, I haven’t seen a red squirrel since before the war! I shall certainly stop when I pass tomorrow.”

When I saw him the following evening he was full of triumph and humility. He had started early for the weekly visit to a bedridden old shepherd which took him past the top of the plantation, and had spent an hour wandering under the trees.

“Three I saw for certain,” he announced, “and I believe there were four. I thought I had found the dray, too, though on the way home I had to admit to myself that it was an old magpie’s nest.”

He told us how he had stayed perfectly still for twenty minutes —the amateur always feels that anything over ten is a marvel of patience — and that one of the squirrels had actually come close to his feet, trustful as a gray squirrel in a park.

“I ventured greatly,” he went on. “I offered a piece of biscuit. It took it in its paws and ate it, looking at me all the time. I — I was amazed! And flattered! Do you feel, Dennim, that I was justified?”

“Oh, Daddy, it was somebody’s pet!” said Benita.

It must, of course, have been a squirrel brought up by human hands and then turned loose. But I did not want to spoil the vicar’s vision of himself as a humble disciple of St. Francis. In any case he had every right to pride himself on moving cautiously and giving an impression of saintly harmlessness. It does not take long for a tame animal to become as wild as its companions.

I could not resist going up to have a look at the squirrels myself. I went alone, for it would have been impossible to explain to Benita why I took such care to avoid cover till I knew it was empty. There were four of them, fine little beasts with rather darker tails than usual.

I could not find the two drays any more than the vicar. Normally that would have been a challenge and I should have spent a couple of weeks on verifying what the family life of the two pairs really was. But I was impatient. My time was fully taken up. Nur Jehan had just begun to answer his helm, as the admiral put it, by pressure of legs alone.

I saw little of my host except at dinner, for his local dictatorship extended beyond his own village and vicar, and he kept himself busy with all the usual bumbling committees, where he was dreaded for his outspokenness, but indispensable. He considered it a duty of hospitality to preserve his guests from the teas and luncheons which accompanied these activities, so that I was surprised when he told me that I had been especially included in an invitation from General Sir Thomas Pamellor.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“The county’s prize pongo,” said the admiral. “Lives just the other side of Cirencester. But he’ll give you the best lunch outside London if you can stand him.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Matter with him is that he’s a bore, boy! Good God, when Thomas retired they had to call in extra police to control the celebrations in Whitehall! It had got so bad that if you had a position of any responsibility in this country you couldn’t talk to a visiting Frenchman without Thomas dropping in beforehand to tell you what you oughtn’t to say. Hell’s bells, if there’s anything we and the French don’t know about each other after a thousand years of fun and games, that ass Thomas is the last person to spot it! But his cook, boy! Mustn’t miss that! A pity we can’t take Frank with us. He might pick up a hint or two.”

General Sir Thomas Pamellor at once reminded me of a fine freshly caught shrimp. Not that he was small, but he sprouted hair at odd angles from eyebrows and mustache, and his coloring was exactly the right mixture of sand and gray. Lady Pamellor was a slightly smaller shrimp, but cooked. She was bright pink and had a good deal of pink in her dress. She gazed at her still-living companion with admiration. There was not much else she could do, for Sir Thomas never stopped giving us extracts from his unwritten memoirs throughout six courses.

“Frankly, I never knew a Frenchman I couldn’t get on with,” said Pamellor. “I was only a colonel then, but whenever and wherever there was trouble with the French, Churchill gave the same order: Turn Pamellor loose on ‘em!”

“Very right!” the admiral agreed naughtily. “You’re the last person they would suspect of playing a deep game.”

“Exactly, Cunobel! A simple soldier and simple liaison. You can’t have too much of it. Now then, mon vieux, I used to say, here’s British policy! And I’d tell him. Here’s French policy! And I’d tell him that, too. Then all we had to do was to go our own way and make the thing work.”

“He speaks such very beautiful French,” said Lady Pamellor, making her sole contribution to the conversation.