And there you are, you know! It never fails, on my word! And all the time people are passing and turning to stare and listen, you know, so that it's quite rowdy--saying 'Yes--that's Linford--there he is,' quite as if they were on one of those coaches seeing New York; and you feel, by Jove, I give you my word, like the solemn ass who goes up on the stage to help the fellow do his tricks, you know, when he calls for 'some kind gentleman from the audience.'" It may be told that this other person was of a cynicism hopelessly indurated.

Not so with Rigby Reeves, even after Reeves alleged the other discoveries that the rector of St.Antipas had "a walk that would be a strut, by gad! if he was as short as I am"; also that he "walked like a parade," which, as expounded by Mr.Reeves, meant that his air in walking was that of one conscious always of leading a triumphal procession in his own honour; and again, that one might read in his eyes a keenly sensuous enjoyment in the tones of his own voice; that he coloured these with a certain unction corresponding to the flourishes with which people of a certain obliquity of mind love to ornament their chirography; still again that he, Reeves, was "ready to lay a bet that the fellow would continue to pose even at the foot of the Great White Throne." Happily this young man was won out of his carping attitude by closer acquaintance with the rector of St.Antipas, and learned to regard those things as no more than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually endowed with human warmth and richness--mere meaningless projections from a personality simple, rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely likable.

He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly impressed by that profusion of gifts with which it had pleased heaven to distinguish him, he was yet constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the fact that he was thus made so salient a man.

Young Reeves found him an appreciative person, moreover, one who betrayed a sensible interest in a fellow's own achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by a few little things in the way of athletics, travel, and sport that had never seemed at all to impress the many--not even the members of one's own family.

Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr.Linford, attending services religiously with his mother and sisters--and nearly making a row in the club cafe one afternoon when the other and more obdurate cynic declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that Linford was "the best actor in New York--on the stage or off!" It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that Aunt Bell and her niece also disagreed one afternoon.