relation, over whose career and reputation he had so often, in the past,
pursed up his lips and shaken his head for the moral benefit of the
domestic circle.

For the Archdeacon, in common with the majority of the Verity family, was
animated by that ineradicable distrust of anything approaching genius
which distinguishes the English country, or rather county, mind. And that
Sir Charles Verity had failed to conform to the family tradition of
solid, unemotional, highly respectable, and usually very wealthy,
mediocrity was beyond question. He had struck out a line for himself;
and, as the event disclosed, an illustrious one. This the Archdeacon,
being a good Conservative, disapproved. It worried him sadly, making him
actually, if unconsciously, exceedingly jealous. And precisely on that
account, by an ingenious inversion of reasoning, he felt he owed it to
abstract justice--in other words to his much disgruntled self--to make
all possible use of this offending, this renegade personage, when
opportunity of so doing occurred. Now, learning on credible authority
that Sir Charles's name was still one to conjure with in India, it
clearly became his duty to bid his son seek out and secure whatever
modicum of advantage--in the matter of advice and introductions--might be
derivable from so irritating a source.

All of which, while jumping with his own desires, caused Tom much sly
mirth. For might it not be counted among the satisfactory results of his
deposition of heavy baggage at Radley's that, for the first time in his
life, he was at liberty to regard even his father, Thomas Pontifex
Verity, Archdeacon of Harchester and Rector of Canton Magna, in a true
perspective? And he laughed again, though this time softly, indulgently,
able in the plenitude of youthful superiority to extend a kindly
tolerance towards the foibles and ingenuous hypocrisies of poor