Another small factor which caused Howard some discomfort was the conversation of the Vicar.  This, at the first sight of Windlow, had been one of the salient features of the scene.  It had been amusing to see the current of a human mind running so frankly open to inspection; and, moreover, the Vicar’s constantly expressed deference for the exalted quality of Howard’s mind and intellectual outfit, though it had not been seriously regarded, had at least an emollient effect.  But it is one thing to sit and look on at a play and to be entertained by the comic relief of some voluble character, and quite another to encounter that volubility at full pressure in private life.  There was a certain charm at first in the Vicar’s inconsequence and volatility; but in daily intercourse the good man’s lack of proportion, his indiscriminate interest in things in general, proved decidedly fatiguing.  Given a crisis, and the Vicar’s view was interesting, because it was, as a rule, exactly the view which the average man would be likely to take, melodramatic, sentimental, commonplace, with this difference, that whereas the average man is tongue-tied and has no faculty of expression, the Vicar had an extraordinarily rich and emphatic vocabulary; and it was thus an artistic presentment of the ordinary standpoint.  But in daily life the Vicar talked with impregnable continuity about any subject in which he happened to be interested.  He listened to no comment; he demanded no criticism.  If he conversed about his parishioners or his fellow-parsons or his country neighbours, it was not uninteresting; but when it was genealogy or folklore or prehistoric remains, it was merely a tissue of scraps, clawed out of books and imperfectly remembered.  Howard found himself respecting the Vicar more and more; he was so kindly, so unworldly, so full of perfectly guileless satisfaction:  he was conscious too of his own irrepressibility.  He said to Howard one day, as they were walking together, “Do you know, Howard, I often think how many blessings you have brought us—­I assure you, quiet and modest as you are, you are felt, your influence permeates to the very ends of the parish; I cannot exactly say what it is, but there’s a sense of something that has to be dealt with, to be reckoned with, a mind of force and energy in the background; your approval is valued, your disapproval is feared.  There is a consciousness, not perhaps expressed or even actually realised, of condescension, of gratification at one from so different a sphere coming among us, sharing our problems, offering us, however unobtrusively, sympathy and fellow-feeling.  It’s very human, very human,” said the Vicar, “and that’s a large word!  But among all the blessings which I say you have brought us, of course my dear girl’s happiness must come first in my regard; and there I hardly know how to express what a marvellous difference you have made!  And then I feel that I, too, have come in for some crumbs from the feast, like the dogs