Mr Crimble opened his mouth and laughed. "I wish," he said, with a gallant little bow, "there were more like you."
"More like me, Mr Crimble?"
"I mean," he explained, darting a glance at the furniture of my bedroom, whose curtains, to my annoyance, hung withdrawn, "I mean that—that you—that so many of us refuse to see the facts of life. To look them in the face, Miss M. There is nothing to fear."
We were getting along famously, and I begged him to take some of Mrs Bowater's black currant jam.
"But then, I have plenty of time," I said agreeably. "And the real difficulty is to get the facts to face me. Dear me, if only, now, I had some of Miss Bowater's brains."
A veil seemed suddenly to lift from his face and as suddenly to descend again. So, too, he had for a moment stopped eating, then as suddenly begun eating again.
"Ah, Miss Bowater! She is indeed clever; a—a brilliant young lady. The very life of a party, I assure you. And, yet, do you know, in parochial gatherings, try as I may, I occasionally find it very difficult to get people to mix. The little social formulas, the prejudices. Yet, surely, Miss M., religion should be the great solvent. At least, that is my view."
He munched away more vigorously, and gazed through his spectacles out through my window-blinds.
"Mixing people must be very wearisome," I suggested, examining his face.
"'Wearisome,'" he repeated blandly. "I am sometimes at my wits' end. No. A curate's life is not a happy one." Yet he confessed it almost with joy.