Paul seemed to them frankly an ass,
and they would be glad when he went away.
He did not seem to Maggie an ass. She thought him the kindest person
she had ever known, kinder even than Katherine, because with
Katherine there was the faintest suspicion of patronage; no, not of
patronage--that was unfair . . . but of an effort to put herself in
exactly Maggie's place so that she might understand perfectly what
were Maggie's motives. With Paul Trenchard there was no effort, no
deliberate slipping out of one world into another one. He was
frankly delighted to tell Maggie everything--all about Skeaton-on-
Sea and its delights, about the church and its marvellous east
window, about the choir and the difficulties with the choir-boys and
the necessity for repairing the organ, about the troubles with the
churchwardens, especially one Mr. Bellows, who, in his cantankerous
and dyspeptic objections to everything that any one proposed, became
quite a lively figure to Maggie's imagination, about the St. John's
Brotherhood which had been formed to keep the "lads" out of the
public-houses and was doing so well, about the Shakespeare Reading
Society and a Mrs.
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