But I don't think my uncle heard her.
It was by our captured crusader that the vicar found us. He came round
the corner at us briskly, a little out of breath. He had an air of
having been running after us since the first toot of our horn had warned
the village of our presence. He was an Oxford man, clean-shaven, with
a cadaverous complexion and a guardedly respectful manner, a cultivated
intonation, and a general air of accommodation to the new order of
things. These Oxford men are the Greeks of our plutocratic empire. He
was a Tory in spirit, and what one may call an adapted Tory by stress
of circumstances; that is to say, he was no longer a legitimist; he was
prepared for the substitution of new lords for old. We were pill vendors
he knew, and no doubt horribly vulgar in soul; but then it might have
been some polygamous Indian rajah, a great strain on a good man's tact,
or some Jew with an inherited expression of contempt. Anyhow, we were
English, and neither Dissenters nor Socialists, and he was cheerfully
prepared to do what he could to make gentlemen of both of us.
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