Then, as they turned over the hot shining cobbles into the Close and saw the green trees swimming in the sun, he turned his mind to the party.

What games would they play?
Who would be there?
What would there be for tea?
He felt creeping over him the stiff shyness that always comes when one is approaching a party, and he wished that the first handshaking and the first plunge into the stares of the critical guests might be over.

But he did not really care.

His hatred of Aunt Amy braced him up; when one was capable of so fine and manly an emotion as this hatred, one need not bother about fellow-guests.

Then the jingle stopped outside a house immediately opposite the great west-end door of the Cathedral; in the little hall Miss Maddison was standing, and from the glittering garden behind her the sun struck through the house into the shadowed street.
Jeremy's public manners were, when he pleased, quite beautiful--"the true, old-fashioned courtesy," gushing friends of the Cole family used to say.