le, he would even cross from one side to the other for the
sake of speaking to her publicly.

While the fact so declared may have been a fact, the young man's
corollary that the rector of St. Antipas sought this experience for the
sake of its mere publicity came from a prejudice which closer
acquaintance with Dr. Linford happily dissolved from his mind. As
reasonably might he have averred, as did another cynic, that the rector
of St. Antipas was actuated by the instincts of a mountebank when he
selected his evening papers each day--deliberately and with kind
words--from the stock of a newswoman at a certain conspicuous and
ever-crowded crossing. As reasonable was the imputation of this other
cynic, that in greeting friends upon the thronged avenue, the rector
never failed to use some word or phrase that would identify him to those
passing, giving the person addressed an unpleasant sense of being placed
in a lime-light, yet reducing him to an insignificance just this side
the line of obliteration.

"You say, 'Ah, Doctor!' and shake hands, you know," said this
hypercritical observer, "and, ten to one, he says something about St.
Antipas directly, you know, or--'Tell him to call on Dr. Linford at the
rectory adjoining St. Antipas--I'm always there at eleven,' or 'Yes,
quite true, the bishop said to me, "My dear Linford, we depend on you in
this matter,"' or telling how Mrs. General Somebody-Something, you
know--I never could remember names--took him down dreadfully by calling
him the most dangerously fascinating man in New York. 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