Mrs. Meredith, on the contrary, invariably praised the
man, and promptly suppressed her husband whenever he began
to rail against him. To Janice, with the violent prejudices of
youth still unmodified by experience and reason, Charles was almost
a special deputy of the individual she heard so unmercifully
thrashed to tatters each Sunday by the Rev. Mr. McClave.
And again, to the contrary, Tabitha insisted with growing fervour
that the servant was a gentleman, possessed of all the
qualities that word implied, plus the most desirable attribute of
all others to eighteenth-century maidens, a romantic possibility.

As a matter of fact, these diverse and contradictory views
had a crossing-point, and accepting this as their mean, Charles
proved himself to be a knowing man with horses, an entirely
ignorant and by no means eager labourer in the little farm work
there was to do, a silent though easily angered being with every
one save Mrs. Meredith, and so clearly above his station that
he was viewed with disfavour, tinctured by not a little fear, by
house-servants, by field hands, and even by Mr. Meredith's
overseer.

[Illustration: "Nay, give me the churn."]

For the most part, Fownes spoke in the West of England
dialect; but whenever he became interested, this instantly slipped
from him, as did his still more ineffective attempt to move and
act the rustic. Indeed, the ease of his movements and the
straightness of his carriage, with a certain indefinable precision
of manner, led to a common agreement among his fellow-labourers
that he had earlier in life accepted the king's shilling.