His eyes were
keen and piercing, neither study nor the advance of years having dimmed
their clear sight or reduced him to the necessity of wearing glasses.
He was still handsome, although his face was too full, and he was too
generously provided with chins. As he talked, his face would have
seemed almost blank and expressionless had it not been for his keen
eyes, full of alert intelligence and abundant vitality. His glance was
acute and searching, and yet nothing could exceed its kindliness and
sympathy.
The visitor who sat talking with Mr. Strathmore was almost ludicrously
his opposite. Mr. Pewtap was a small, ineffectual creature, with
inefficiency oozing out of his every pore. He was conspicuously the
incarnation of well-meaning and exasperating incompetence; one of
those men who might be forgiven everything but the fact that their
stupidities are invariably the result of the best intentions. It was
evident at a glance that this man had used the church as a genteel
pauper asylum, wherein his ineptitude might be devoted to the service
of Heaven since nothing gifted with the common sense of earth would
tolerate it.
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