up his eyes to heaven with the air of the family
steward in Hogarth's "Mariage a la Mode." He had not his chief's Napoleonic
mind; but he had a wife and a large family. Clem Sypher also thought of
that--not only of Shuttleworth's wife and family, but also of the wives and
families of the many men in his employ. It kept him awake at nights.

In the soothing air of Nunsmere, however, he slept, in long dead stretches,
as a tired man sleeps, in spite of trains which screeched past the bottom
of his lawn. Their furious unrest enhanced the peace of village things. He
began to love the little backwater of the earth whose stillness calmed the
fever of life. As soon as he stepped out on to the platform at Ripstead a
cool hand seemed to touch his forehead, and charm away the cares that made
his temples throb. At Nunsmere he gave himself up to the simplicities of
the place. He took to strolling, like Septimus, about the common and made
friends with the lame donkey. On Sunday mornings he went to church. He had
first found himself there out of curiosity, for, though not an irreligious
man, he was not given to pious practices; but afterwards he had gone on
account of the restfulness of the rural service. His mind essentially
reverend took it very seriously, just as it took seriously the works of a
great poet which he could not understand or any alien form of human
aspiration; even the parish notices and the publication of banns he
received with earnest attention. His intensity of interest as he listened
to the sermon sometimes flattered the mild vicar, and at other times--when
thinness of argument pricked his conscience--alarmed him considerably. But
Sypher would not have dared enter into theological disputation. He took the
sermon as he took the hymns, in which he joined lustily. Cousin Jane, whom
he invariably met with Mrs. Oldrieve after the service and escorted home,
had no such scruples. She tore the vicar's theology into fragments and
scattered them behind her as she walked, like a hare in a paper chase.

Said the Literary Man from London, who had strolled with them on one of
these occasions:

"The good lady's one of those women who speak as if they had a relation who
had married a high official in the Kingdom of Heaven and now and then gave
them confidential information."

Sypher liked Rattenden because he could often put into a phrase his own
unformulated ideas. He also belonged to a world to which he himself was a
stranger