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of the church rose happily in the depression made by the valley in the
outline of the hills. A winding stream, a thin intermittency of sky blue
and foam, glittered amidst a thick margin of reeds and loosestrife and
overhanging willows, along the centre of a sinuous pennant of meadow.
The whole prospect had that curiously English quality of ripened
cultivation--that look of still completeness--that apes perfection,
under the sunset warmth.
And the Vicar too looked mellow. He looked habitually and essentially
mellow, as though he had been a mellow baby born into a mellow class, a
ripe and juicy little boy. One could see, even before he mentioned it,
that he had gone to an ivy-clad public school in its anecdotage, with
magnificent traditions, aristocratic associations, and no chemical
laboratories, and proceeded thence to a venerable college in the very
ripest Gothic. Few books he had younger than a thousand years; of these,
Yarrow and Ellis and good pre-Methodist sermons made the bulk. He was a
man of moderate height, a little shortened in appearance by his
equatorial dimensions, and a face that had been mellow from the first
was now climacterically ripe. The beard of a David hid his redundancy of
chin; he wore no watch chain out of refinements and his modest clerical
garments were made by a West End tailor.... And he sat with a hand on
either shin, blinking at his village in beatific approval. He waved a
plump palm towards it. His burthen sang out again. What more could any
one desire?
"
We are fortunately situated," he said, putting the thing tamely.
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