Just then happily there was a diversion. The yard-door, which a policeman had shut, burst open; and a baggy old gentleman lumbered through it with the scared look of a bear lost in a busy thoroughfare and much the motions of one.
Holding on to his coat-tails like a keeper came Ruth. She was panting, and a little dishevelled; in her arms was her baby, and her hat was a-wry.
"He would come!" she said, almost in tears. "There was no stoppin him. So I had just to come along too."
Joe, aware that he had gone too far, and glad of the interruption, stepped up to Ruth and took the baby from her arms. The distressed woman gave him a look of gratitude and began to pat and preen her hair.
At this moment Ernie burst into the yard. He was more alert than usual, and threw a swift, almost hostile, glance about him. Then he saw Ruth busy tidying herself, and relaxed.
"Caught him playing truant, didn't you, in Saffrons Croft?" he said. "The park-keeper tell me."
"Yes," she laughed. "I told him it was nothing to do with him--strikes and riots and bloodshed!--Such an idea!"
A baby began to wail; and Ernie turned to see Joe with little Ned in his arms.
"Hallo! Joe!" he chaffed. "_My_ baby, I think."
He took his own child amid laughter, Joe surrendering it reluctantly.
Just then Edward Caspar appeared in the door of the office. He looked at them over his spectacles and said quietly, as if to himself.
"It's Law as well. We must never forget that."
"What's he mean?" he asked low.--"Law as well."
Ernie, dandling the baby, drew away into a corner where he would be out of earshot of the Archdeacon.
"It's a line of poetry, sir," he explained in hushed voice--
"_O, Love that art remorseless Law, So beautiful, so terrible._"
"Go on!" said the Colonel, keenly. "Go on!--I like that."
"That's all," he said reluctantly. "It never got beyond them two lines." He added with a shy twinkle--"That's dad, that is."
A chocolate-bodied car stopped in the street opposite.
In it the Colonel saw a lean woman with eyes the blue of steel, fierce black brows, and snow-white hair.
"It's mother come after dad," Ernie explained. "In Mr. Trupp's car. That's my brother driving."
The old surgeon, crossing the yard, now met the run-agate emerging from the office and took him kindly by the arm.