I think it is the eyes that make the face, however. They are deep grey and remarkably luminous, and on this occasion they simply bubbled over with mischievousness. His smile was never very pronounced, and always more or less satirical, but his eyes flashed and sparkled when he was roused, though they had looked kindly and even plaintive when he arrived, and before he was warmed. He is the sort of man who can do all his talking with his eyes.
A high forehead is surmounted by a mass of hair—once black, but rapidly turning grey—which he evidently treats as of no importance, for it lies, as the children say, "anyhow." But how old he is—I give it up.
He passed his hand through his hair now, with a quick involuntary movement, as he turned to the squire.
"You may bracket the new woman and the woman with a mission together, but you can never make them one. That they have some things in common is nothing to the point. The new woman, as I understand her, has no mission, not even a commission. The new woman is Protest, embodied and at present skirted, but with a protest against the skirt. Her most longed-for goal is the Unattainable, and if by some chance she should reach it she would be dismayed and annoyed. Meantime, with the vision before her eyes of the table of the gods, she cries aloud that she is forced to feed on husks, and as she must hug something, hugs a grievance."
"Philip Derwent," interposed the vicar's wife, "you are in danger of becoming vulgar."
"Vulgarity, madam," he rejoined, "is in these days the brand of refinement. It is only your truly refined man who has the courage to be vulgar in polite society. No other dares to call a spade a spade or a lie a lie. Those who wish to be considered refined speak of the one as an 'agricultural implement' and of the other as a 'terminological inexactitude.' But to return to our sheep who are clamouring for wolves' clothing——"
"Really, Philip!" protested the vicar's wife, pursing her lips more emphatically than ever.
"The latest incarnation of Protest, if I may so speak, takes the form of a demand for the suffrage, and is accompanied by much beating of drums and——"
"Smashing of windows," I ventured.
He bowed. "And smashing of windows. By and by they will get their desire."