The Dean's
house was on the other side of the Cathedral, and you had to go down the
High Street and then to the left up Orange Street to get to it, an
irrational roundabout proceeding that always irritated the Archdeacon.
Very splendid he looked, his top-hat shining, his fine high white collar,
his spotless black clothes, his boots shapely and smart. (He and Bentinck-
Major were, I suppose, the only two clergymen in Polchester who used boot-
trees.) But his smartness was in no way an essential with him. Clothed in
rags he would still have the grand air. "I often think of him," Miss
Dobell once said, "as one of those glorious gondoliers in Venice. How
grand he would look!"
However that might be, it is beyond question that the ridiculous clothes
that a clergyman of the Church of England is compelled to wear did not
make him absurd, nor did he look an over-dressed fop like Bentinck-Major.
Miss Dobell's gondolier was, on this present occasion, in an excellent
temper; and meeting his daughter Joan, he felt very genial towards her.
Joan had observed, several days before, that the family crisis might be
said to be past, and very thankful she was.
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