At the top of the High Street he met Ryle
the Precentor. There had been a time when Ryle was terrified by the
Archdeacon; that time was not far distant, but it was gone. Nevertheless,
even though the Archdeacon were suddenly old and sick and unimportant, you
never could tell but that he might say something to somebody that it would
be unpleasant to have said. "Politeness all the way round" was Ryle's
motto, and a very safe one too. Moreover, Ryle, when he could rise above
his alarm for the safety of his own position, was a kindly man, and it
really _was_ sad to see the poor Archdeacon so pale and tired, the
scratch on his cheek, even now not healed, giving him a strangely battered
appearance.
And how would Ryle have liked Mrs. Ryle to leave him? And how would he
feel if his son, Anthony (aged at present five), ran away with the
daughter of a publican? And how, above all, would he feel did he know that
the whole town was talking about him and saying "Poor Precentor!"? But
perhaps the Archdeacon did _not_ know. Strange the things that people
did not know about themselves!--and at that thought the Precentor went
goose-fleshy all over, because of the things that at that very moment
people might be saying about _him_ and he knowing none of them!
All this passed very swiftly through Ryle's mind, and was quickly
strangled by hearing Brandon utter in quite his old knock-you-down-if-you-
don't-get-out-of-my-way voice, "Ha! Ryle! Out early this morning! I hope
you're not planning any more new-fangled musical schemes for us!"
Oh, well! if the Archdeacon were going to take that sort of tone with him,
Ryle simply wasn't going to stand it! Why should he? To-day isn't six
months ago.
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