Mr. Withells proved most neighbourly. He had artistic leanings himself, and possessed some good pictures; among them, one of Anthony's, which naturally proved a bond of union. He did not even so much as sketch, himself--which Anthony considered another point in his favour--but he was a really skilled photographer, possessed the most elaborate cameras, and obtained quite beautiful results. Since Jan's return from India he had completely won her heart by taking a great many photographs of the children, pictures delightfully natural, and finished as few amateurs contrive to present them. It was rumoured in Amber Guiting that Mr. Withells' views on the subject of matrimony were "peculiar"; but all the ladies, especially the elderly ladies, were unanimous in declaring that he had a "beautiful mind." Mrs. Fream, the vicar's wife, timidly confided to Jan that Mr. Withells had told her husband that he cared only for "spiritual marriage"-- whatever that might be; and that, as yet, he had met no woman whom he felt would see eye to eye with him on this question. "He doesn't approve of caresses," she added. "Well, who wants to caress him?" Jan asked bluntly. Meg declared there was one thing she could not bear about Mr. Withells, and that was the way he shook hands, "exactly as if he had no thumbs. If he's so afraid of touching one as all that comes to, why doesn't he let it alone?" Yet the apparently thumbless hands were constantly occupied in bearing gifts of all kinds to his friends. In appearance he was dapper, smallish, without being undersized, always immaculately neat in his attire, with a clean-shaven, serious, rather sallow face, which was inclined to be chubby as to the cheeks. He wore double-sighted pince-nez, and no mortal had ever seen him without them. His favourite writer was Miss Jane Austen, and he deplored the licentious tendency of so much modern literature; frequently, and with flushed countenance, denouncing certain books as an "outrage." He was considered a very well-read man. He disliked anything that was "not quite nice," and detested a strong light, whether it were thrown upon life or landscape; in bright sunshine he always carried a white umbrella lined with green. The game he played best was croquet, and here he was really first class; but he was also skilled in every known form of Patience, and played each evening unless he happened to be dining out. As regards food he was something of a faddist, and on the subject of fresh air almost a monomaniac. He declared that he could not exist for ten minutes in a room with closed windows, and that the smell of apples made him feel positively faint; moreover, he would mention his somewhat numerous antipathies as though there were something peculiarly meritorious in possessing so many. This made his entertainment at any meal a matter of agitated consideration among the ladies of Amber Guiting.