Happily this young man was won out of his carping attitude by closer acquaintance with the rector of St. Antipas, and learned to regard those things as no more than the inseparable antennae of a nature unusually endowed with human warmth and richness—­mere meaningless projections from a personality simple, rugged, genuine, never subtle, and entirely likable.  He came to feel that, while the rector himself was unaffectedly impressed by that profusion of gifts with which it had pleased heaven to distinguish him, he was yet constantly annoyed and embarrassed by the fact that he was thus made so salient a man.  Young Reeves found him an appreciative person, moreover, one who betrayed a sensible interest in a fellow’s own achievements, finding many reasons to be impressed by a few little things in the way of athletics, travel, and sport that had never seemed at all to impress the many—­not even the members of one’s own family.  Rigby Reeves, indeed, became an ardent partisan of Dr. Linford, attending services religiously with his mother and sisters—­and nearly making a row in the club cafe one afternoon when the other and more obdurate cynic declared, with a fine assumption of the judicial, that Linford was “the best actor in New York—­on the stage or off!”

It was concerning this habit of the daily stroll that Aunt Bell and her niece also disagreed one afternoon.  They were in the little dark-wooded, red-walled library of the rectory, Aunt Bell with her book of devotion, Nancy at her desk, writing.

From her low chair near the window, Aunt Bell had just beheld the Doctor’s erect head, its hat of flawless gloss, and his beautifully squared shoulders, progress at a moderate speed across her narrow field of vision.  In so stiffly a level line had they passed that a profane thought seized her unawares:  the fancy that the rector of St. Antipas had been pulled by the window on rollers.  But this was at once atoned for.  She observed that Allan was one of the few men who walk always like those born to rule.  Then she spoke: 

“Nancy, why do you never walk with Allan in the afternoon?  Nothing would please him better—­the boy is positively proud to have you.”

“Oh, I had to finish this letter to Clara,” Nancy answered abstractedly, as if still intent upon her writing, debating a word with narrowed eyes and pen-tip at her teeth.

But Aunt Bell was neither to be misunderstood nor insufficiently answered.

“Not this afternoon, especially—­any afternoon.  I can’t remember when you’ve walked with him.  So many times I’ve heard you refuse—­and I dare say it doesn’t please him, you know.”

“Oh, he has often told me so.”

“Well?”

“Aunt Bell—­I—­Oh, you’ve walked on the street with Allan!”

“To be sure I have!”

“Well!”