details about him.
Fresh as he was from all the delicate sights, the harmonious colors and
delightful forms of the Squire's house, they made an unusually sharp
impression on his fastidious senses. What does human life become lived
on reeking floors and under stifling roofs like these? What strange,
abnormal deteriorations, physical and spiritual, must it not inevitably
undergo? Langham felt a sudden inward movement of disgust and repulsion.
'For Heaven's sake, keep your superstitions!' he could have cried to the
whole human race, 'or any other narcotic that a grinding fate has left
you. What does _anything_ matter to the mass of mankind but a little
ease, a little lightening of pressure on this side or on that?'

Meanwhile the old man went maundering on, talking of the weather, and of
his sick child, and 'Mr. Elsmere,' with a kind of listless incoherence
which hardly demanded an answer, though Langham threw in a word or two
here and there.

Among other things, he began to ask a question or two about Robert's
predecessor, a certain Mr. Preston, who had left behind him a memory of
amiable evangelical indolence.

'Did you see much of him?' he asked.

'Oh law, no, sir!' replied the man, surprised into something like
energy. I Never seed 'im more'n once a year, and sometimes not that!'

'Was he liked here?'

'Well, sir, it was like this, you see. My wife, she's north-country, she
is, comes from Yorkshire; sometimes she'd used to say to me, "Passon 'ee
ain't much good, and passon 'ee ain't much harm. 'Ee's no more good nor
more 'arm, so fer as _I_ can see, nor a chip in a basin o' parritch."
And that was just about it, sir,' said the old man, pleased for the
hundredth time with his wife's bygone flight of metaphor and his own
exact memory of it.

As to the Rector's tendance of his child his tone was very cool and
guarded.

'It do seem strange, sir, as nor he nor Doctor Grimes 'ull let her have
anything to put a bit of flesh on her, nothin' but them messy things
as he brings--milk an' that. An' the beef jelly--lor! such a trouble!
Missis Elsmere, he tells my wife, strains all the stuff through a cloth,
she do; never seed anythin' like it, nor my wife neither. People is
clever nowadays,' said the speaker dubiously. Langham realized, that in
this quarter of his parish at any rate, his friend's pastoral vanity, if
he had any, would not find much to feed on. Nothing, to judge from
this specimen at least, greatly affecte