“I didn’t know,” said Clovis, “I only guessed. When you wanted to turn the prosaic lorry of commerce into a feathered poem flitting through the verdure of a tropical forest, I knew you must be working up a sonnet, and Florrie was the only female name that suggested itself as rhyming with lorry.”

Septimus still looked uneasy.

“I believe you know more,” he said.

Clovis laughed quietly, but said nothing.

“How much do you know?” Septimus asked desperately.

“The yew tree in the garden,” said Clovis.

“There! I felt certain I’d dropped it somewhere. But you must have guessed something before. Look here, you have surprised my secret. You won’t give me away, will you? It is nothing to be ashamed of, but it wouldn’t do for the editor of the Cathedral Monthly to go in openly for that sort of thing, would it?”