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. They were in the little dark-wooded,
red-walled library of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion,
Nancy at her desk, writing.

From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had just beheld the
Doctor's erect head, its hat of flawless gloss, and his beautifully
squared shoulders, progress at a moderate speed across her narrow field
of vision. In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane
thought seized her unawares: the fancy that the rector of St. Antipas
had been pulled by the window on rollers. But this was at once atoned
for. She observed that Allan was one of the few men who walk always like
those born to rule. Then she spoke:

"Nancy, why do you