Mrs. Armitage, his cook, has given tales of his "grimness" to the
cottages where her comfortable presence is welcomed on Sunday and
Thursday afternoons. She believes, however, that he must be a
"religious gentleman," because (so she says) "he talks like out of the
Bible."

This would seem to bear out Mr. William Wyvern's allusion to the minor
prophet element of his character.

It is the habit of Clara and Ada, his maids, squeezing at the gate
from positions dangerous to modesty into which their ardent young men
have thrust them--it is their habit, thus placed, to excuse
themselves from indelicate embraces by telling alarming tales of Mr.
Marrapit's "carrying on" should they be late. He is a "fair old
terror," they say.

The testimony of Mr. Fletcher, his gardener, gloomy over his beer in
the bar-parlours, seems to support the "stinginess" that the vicar has
determined in Mr. Marrapit's character. Mr. Fletcher, for example, has
lugubriously shown what has to be put up with when in the service of a
man who had every inch of the grounds searched because a threepenny
bit had been dropped. "It's 'ard--damn 'ard," Mr Fletcher said on that
occasion. "I'm a gardener, I am; not a treasure-'unter." Murmurs of
sympathy chorused endorsement of this view.

Finally there are the words of Frederick, son of Mrs. Armitage, and
assistant to Fletcher, whose pleasure it is to set on end the touzled
hair of the youth of Paltley Hill by obviously exaggerated stories of
Mr. Marrapit's grim rule.