‘I had heard of your arrival here, of course,’ said Peak, trying to appear civil, though anything more than that was beyond his power.  ‘Will you sit down?’

‘This is the “breathing time o’ the day” with you, I hope?  I don’t disturb your work?’

‘I was only reading this book of Walsh’s.  Do you know it?’

But for some such relief of his feelings, Godwin could not have sat still.  There was a pleasure in uttering Walsh’s name.  Moreover, it would serve as a test of Chilvers’ disposition.

‘Walsh?’ He took up the volume.  ’Ha!  Justin Walsh.  I know him.  A wonderful book!  Admirable dialectic!  Delicious style!’

‘Not quite orthodox, I fancy,’ replied Godwin, with a curling of the lips.

’Orthodox?  Oh, of course not, of course not!  But a rich vein of humanity.  Don’t you find that?—­Pray allow me to throw off my overcoat.  Ha, thanks!—­A rich vein of humanity.  Walsh is by no means to be confused with the nullifidians.  A very broad-hearted, large-souled man; at bottom the truest of Christians.  Now and then he effervesces rather too exuberantly.  Yes, I admit it.  In a review of his last book, which I was privileged to write for one of our papers, I ventured to urge upon him the necessity of restraint; it seems to me that in this new work he exhibits more self-control, an approach to the serene fortitude which I trust he may attain.  A man of the broadest brotherliness.  A most valuable ally of renascent Christianity.’

Peak was hardly prepared for this strain.  He knew that Chilvers prided himself on ‘breadth’, but as yet he had enjoyed no intercourse with the broadest school of Anglicans, and was uncertain as to the limits of modern latitudinarianism.  The discovery of such fantastic liberality in a man whom he could not but dislike and contemn gave him no pleasure, but at least it disposed him to amusement rather than antagonism.  Chilvers’ pronunciation and phraseology were distinguished by such original affectation that it was impossible not to find entertainment in listening to him.  Though his voice was naturally thin and piping, he managed to speak in head notes which had a ring of robust utterance.  The sound of his words was intended to correspond with their virile warmth of meaning.  In the same way he had cultivated a habit of the muscles which conveyed an impression that he was devoted to athletic sports.  His arms occasionally swung as if brandishing dumb-bells, his chest now and then spread itself to the uttermost, and his head was often thrown back in an attitude suggesting self-defence.

‘So you are about to join us,’ he exclaimed, with a look of touching interest, much like that of a ladies’ doctor speaking delicately of favourable symptoms.  Then, as if consciously returning to the virile note, ’I think we shall understand each other.  I am always eager to study the opinions of those among us who have scientific minds.  I hear of you on all hands; already you have strongly impressed some of the thinking people in Exeter.’