the professional society he now frequented, I cannot tell, but it
had been manufactured somewhere--after a large, scrolly kind of
pattern, sounding well-bred and dignified. I wonder how many speak
with the voices that really belong to them.

Plainly, to judge from the one Bascombe used, he was accustomed to
lay down the law, but in gentlemanly fashion, and not as if he cared
a bit about the thing in question himself. By the side of his easy
carriage, his broad chest, and towering Greek-shaped head, Thomas
Wingfold dwindled almost to vanishing--in a word, looked nobody. And
besides his inferiority in size and self-presentment, he had a
slight hesitation of manner, which seemed to anticipate, if not to
court, the subordinate position which most men, and most women too,
were ready to assign him. He said, "Don't you think?" far oftener
than "I think" and was always more ready to fix his attention upon
the strong points of an opponent's argument than to re-assert his
own in slightly altered phrase like most men, or even in fresh forms
like a few; hence--self-assertion, either modestly worn like a shirt
of fine chain-armour, or gaunt and obtrusive like plates of steel,
being the strength of the ordinary man--what could the curate appear
but defenceless, therefore weak, and therefore contemptible? The
truth is, he had less self-conceit than a mortal's usual share, and
was not yet possessed of any opinions interesting enough to himself
to seem worth defending with any approach to vivacity.

Bascombe and he bowed in response to their introduction with proper
indifference, after a moment's solemn pause exchanged a sentence or
two which resembled an exercise in the proper use of a foreign
language, and then gave what attention Englishmen are capable of
before dinner to the two ladies--the elder of whom, I may just