Dons, head-masters, the pedagogic and professorial tribe generally, he had long taken in his stride quite unabashed.

Church dignitaries, too, left him saucily cool.

For--so at least he argued--was not his elder brother, Pontifex, private chaplain to the Bishop of Harchester?
And did not this fact--he knowing poor old Ponty as only brother can know brother--throw a rather lurid light upon the spiritual and intellectual limitations of the Bench?
In respect of the British aristocracy, his social betters, he also kept an open mind.
For had not Lord Bulparc's son and heir, little Oxley, acted as his fag, boot-black and bacon-frier, for the best part of a year at school?
Notwithstanding which fact--Lord Oxley was of a mild, forgiving disposition--had not he, Tom, spent the cricket week several summers running at Napworth Castle; where, on one celebrated occasion, he bowled a distinguished Permanent Under-Secretary first ball, and, on another, chided a marquis and ex-Cabinet Minister for misquoting Catullus.
Yet now, sitting smoking and listening to those records of eastern rule and eastern battle, in the quiet lamp-light of the long room--with its dark book-cases, faintly gleaming Chinese images, and dumpy pillars--his native cheekiness faded into most unwonted humility.

For he was increasingly conscious of being, to put it vulgarly "up against something pretty big." Conscious of a personality altogether too secure of its own power to spread itself or, in the smallest degree, bluff or brag.

Sir Charles Verity struck him, indeed, as calm to the confines of cynicism.
He gave, but gave of his abundance, royally indifferent to the cost.
There was plenty more where all this came from, of knowledge, of initiative and of thought.