He had said: "Delighted, I'm sure," but he had not looked delighted.

Very possibly he regarded me as a meddlesome, gossiping old tom-cat.

Perhaps for that reason he would deem it wise to adopt a propitiatory attitude.

Perhaps also he retained a certain affectionate respect for me, seeing that I had known him as a tiny boy in a sailor suit, and had fed him at Harrow (as I did poor Oswald Fenimore at Wellington) with Mrs.Marigold's famous potted shrimp and other comestibles, and had put him up, during here and there holidays and later a vacation, when his mother and aunts, with whom he lived, had gone abroad to take inefficacious cures for the tedium of a futile life.

Oxford, however, had set him a bit off my plane.
As an ordinary soldierman, trained in the elementary virtues of plain-speaking and direct dealing, love of country and the sacredness of duty, I have had no use for the metaphysician.