But somehow found the subject more difficult to grapple than the fascinations of Amelia. With Richard things were different. He despised Reuben as bestial, and sometimes jeopardised his skin by nearly showing his contempt. He now had a peculiar friendship with Anne Bardon. They had met accidentally a second time, and deliberately half a dozen more. In Richard Anne had made a discovery--he appealed to her imagination, which ran on severe lines. She sympathised with his ambition to break free from the grind and grossness of Odiam, and resolved to help him as much as she could. She lent him books, and guided him with her superior knowledge and education. Their meetings were secret, from her family as well as his. But they were dignified--there was no scurrying like rabbits. Richard's work kept him mostly on the Flightshot borders of Odiam, and often the grave Anne would walk down to the hedge, and help him construe Tacitus or parse from Ovid. There was an old tree by the boundary fence, in the hollow of which she put new books for him to find, and into which he would return those he had finished. She was very careful to maintain the right attitude towards him; he was always her humble servant, he never forgot to call her "ma'am." But the disciple of Anne Bardon could aspire to be master among other men. Richard began to startle and amuse his family by strange new ways. He took to washing his neck every morning, and neatly combed his hair. He cut up an old shirt into pocket-handkerchiefs. He began to model his speech on Miss Bardon's--clipping it, and purging it ridiculously. Reuben would roar with laughter. "'Pray am I to remove this dirt?'--Did you ever hear such präaperness and denticalness?--all short and soft lik the Squire himself. You wash out all that mucky sharn, my lad, if that's wot you mean." § 8. Robert Backfield was a member of Peasmarsh choir. He had a good, ringing bass voice, which had attracted the clerk's notice, and though Reuben disapproved of his son's having any interests outside Odiam, he realised that as a good Tory he ought to support the Church--especially as the hours of the practices did not clash with Robert's more important engagements.