“Now I have a grandstand seat,” he said, and from the slow, intent movement of his head and the delighted interest in his eyes you would have thought there were goldfishes swimming about in the air and in and out of the corners under the ceiling, or little birds flying busily around, some of them singing. “Oh, it’s great!” he said. “You have a great sense of order, Delia. So did she, God rest her soul.”

Mrs. Bagot understood that the Bishop was talking about her grandmother, Mrs. Kelly of Poulbwee. She had never known her grandmother.

“You have a gas fire in here,” he said. “That’s very handy. And that’s your garden out there. I see a lot of yellow.”

“That’s the laburnum tree,” Mrs. Bagot said. “And the side wall is covered with nasturtiums.”

“And you have flowers there on the table. Your grandmother always kept the spring and summer flowers on the big round table in the parlor, even though nobody ever went in there. She had that Waterford glass flower bowl that she was very proud of.”

“Oh, the Waterford glass for flowers,” Mrs. Bagot said. “It’s still there at Poulbwee. It’s like a fountain.”

“Yes, a fountain,” the Bishop said. “And it made a fountain out of the roses. They looked as though they had leaped up out of the glass. I never saw such colors. And they used to be reflected in the wood of the table the same way your flowers are reflected here in this table. I can see the yellow laburnum out there in the garden about as well as I can see the reflection in the table. My eyes are that bad.”

He turned around and made his slow journey back to his place beside the fire, and Mrs. Bagot lifted the dining-room chair he had been leaning on back into its place at the table and came to sit opposite to him. She left the folding doors open behind her.