his teeth over it; he shook his fist at them; and they rose to his mood, delighting in little Tommy Wharton’s pluck in “giving it them hot.”  He was always giving it them hot, warming himself at his own fire.  And then little Tommy Wharton slipped out of his little surplice and his little cassock, and into the Hannays’ house for whiskey and soda.  He could drink peg for peg with Lawson Hannay, without turning a hair, while poor Lawson turned many hairs, till his little wife ran in and hid the whiskey and shook her handkerchief at the little Canon, and “shooed” him merrily away.  And Lawson, big, good-natured Lawson, would lend him more “money” to build his church with.

So the Vicar of All Souls, who aspired to be all things to all men, was hand in glove with the Lawson Hannays.  He had occasionally been known to provide for the tables of the poor, but he dearly loved to sit at the tables of the rich; and he justified his predilection by the highest example.

Anne, who knew the Canon by his spiritual reputation only, turned to him with interest.  Her eye, keen to discern these differences, saw at once that he was a man of the people.  He had the unfinished features, the stunted form of an artisan; his body sacrificed, his admirers said, to the energies of his mighty brain.  His face was a heavy, powerful oval, bilious-coloured, scarred with deep lines, and cleft by the wide mouth of an orator, a mouth that had acquired the appearance of strength through the Canon’s habit of bringing his lips together with a snap at the close of his periods.  His eyes were a strange, opaque grey, but the clever Canon made them seem almost uncomfortably penetrating by simply knitting his eyebrows in a savage pent-house over them.  They now looked forth at Anne as if the Canon knew very well that her soul had a secret, and that it would not long be hidden from him.

They talked about the Eliotts, for the Canon’s catholicity bridged the gulf between Thurston Square and vociferous, high-living, fashionable Scale.  He had lately succeeded (by the power of his eloquence) in winning over Mrs. Eliott from St. Saviour’s to All Souls.  He hoped also to win over Mrs. Eliott’s distinguished friend.  For the Canon was mortal.  He had yielded to the unspiritual seduction of filling All Souls by emptying other men’s churches.  Lawson Hannay smiled on the parson’s success, hoping (he said) to see his money back again.

Money or no money, he left him a clear field with Mrs. Majendie.  Ladies, when they were pretty, appealed to Lawson as part of the appropriate decoration of a table; but, much as he loved their charming society, he loved his dinner more.  He loved it with a certain pure extravagance, illuminated by thought and imagination.  Mrs. Hannay was one with him in this affection.  Her heart shared it; her fancy ministered to it, rising higher and higher in unwearying flights.  It was a link between them; almost (so fine was the passion) an intellectual tie.  But reticence was not in Hannay’s nature; and his emotion affected Anne very unpleasantly.  She missed the high lyric note in it.  All epicurean pleasures, even so delicate and fantastic a joy as Hannay’s in his dinner, appeared gross to Anne.