hores, and strikes them with a sense of wonder and
dismay.

He sat very motionless at his bureau, leaning a little over his papers
like a man to whom things do not come too easily; and every now and then
he stopped to refer to the calendar at his left hand, or to a paper in
one of the many pigeonholes. Open, and almost out of reach, was a back
volume of Punch, of which periodical, as a landed proprietor, he had
an almost professional knowledge. In leisure moments it was one of his
chief recreations to peruse lovingly those aged pictures, and at the
image of John Bull he never failed to think: 'Fancy making an Englishman
out a fat fellow like that!'

It was as though the artist had offered an insult to himself, passing
him over as the type, and conferring that distinction on someone fast
going out of fashion. The Rector, whenever he heard Mr. Pendyce say
this, strenuously opposed him, for he was himself of a square, stout
build, and getting stouter.

With all their aspirations to the character of typical Englishmen, Mr.
Pendyce and Mr. Barter thought themselves far from the old beef and
beer, port and pigskin types of the Georgian and early Victorian era.
They were men of the world, abreast of the times, who by virtue of a
public school and 'Varsity training had acquired a manner, a knowledge
of men and affairs, a standard of thought on which it had really never
been needful to improve. Both of them, but especially Mr. Pendyce, kept
up with all that was going forward by visiting the Metropolis six or
seven or even eight times a year. On these occasions they rarely took
their wives, having almost always important business in hand--old
College, Church, or Conservative dinners, cricket-matches, Church
Congress, the Gaiety Theatre, and for Mr. Barter the Lyceum. Both, too,
belonged to clubs--the Rector to a comfortable, old-fashioned place
where he could get a rubber without gambling, and Mr. Pendyce to the
Temple of things as they had been, as became a man who, having turned
all social problems over in his mind, had decided that there was no real
safety but in the past.

They always went up to London grumbling, but this was necessary, and
indeed salutary, because of their wives; and they always came back
grumbling, because of their livers, which a good country rest always
fortunately reduced in time for the next visit. In this way they kept
themselves free from the taint of provincialism.

In the silence of his master