This was perhaps a pity. Both were good men, both were honest men, but like so many people, otherwise quite admirable, their sense of vision was not acute. Nodosities of character in their neighbors were apt to overshadow the central merit. In this case it was not so much a question of professional jealousy as a matter of social rivalry. The root of the trouble was that Dr. Joliffe and Dr. Parker were a little too much alike. Dr. Parker was clearly gratified at being the very man whom the vicar of Penfold wanted to see, but carefully dissembled his feelings while Mr. Perry-Hennington stepped out of the car and buttonholed him rather ostentatiously on the steps of the council chamber. The vicar had to suggest that they should hold a little conference after the meeting in regard to a matter of importance. Certainly they were not in a position to hold it at the moment. Fellow members of the War Economy Committee were rolling up in surprising numbers; weird old landowners in wonderful vehicles, local J. P.’s, retired stockbrokers, civil servants, city men, and very _affairé_ ladies. For all of these the parson of Penfold had a greeting. With his tall, thin, aristocratic figure, his distinguished air, his large, fleshy, important nose, he was the kind of man who dominates every company he enters. And it was so entirely natural to him to do so that no one ever thought of resenting it. He was not a clever man, a witty man, nor was tact his long suit, moreover he was apt to give himself airs, but for some reason or combination of reasons, he was greatly respected, generally looked up to and almost universally popular. He seemed to carry equal weight at Gleave Castle, the Mount Olympus of the local cosmos, and at the board of guardians. The acid people who dissect our naïve and charming human nature might have said that it was for no better reason than that the vicar of Penfold was a born busybody, doubly blessed with a loud voice, and a total absence of humor, but the good and the credulous who take things on trust and form a working majority in every republic always declared “it was because he was such a gentleman.” By sheer pressure of human character, Mr. Perry-Hennington took a seat next the chairman of the meeting in the council chamber. And when that almost incredibly distinguished personage, a rather pathetic and extremely inaudible old thing in red mittens, got on to his legs, the vicar of Penfold could be heard rendering him very audible assistance in the course of his opening remarks. But it seemed entirely right and proper that it should be so. And nobody resented it, not even the old boy in the red mittens, who had retired from county business years ago, but who, as the master of Gleave, was fully determined to do his bit toward winning the war like everybody else.