Читать книгу Cousin Mary онлайн

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Mr. Asquith had this kind of reputation, if it can be called a reputation. He was poor; he had very little, if anything, more than the £100 a year which Mr. Prescott, the Rector, gave him. He was accustomed to spare living, and liked it, being unreasonably, and indeed wrongly, indifferent to what he ate and drank, and quite unworthy of the good cooking at the Rectory or the more pretentious efforts at the Hall. He liked his own chop at home quite as well, even when he had, as was sometimes necessary, to scrape off the cinders which it brought along with it from the gridiron, before he ate it. Mr. Asquith thought this was a very natural accident, and did not complain.

Such a man is the only man altogether independent in our complicated social system. He never remarked the ugly Kidderminster under his feet, or wished for a Persian rug in its place. He did not mind in the least when his clerical coat got shabby. What did it matter? Everybody knew him on the one hand—nobody knew him on the other. In either case he was indifferent, and consequently independent. If there was anything he was a little particular over, it was his washing, his landlady said. The landlady was an old servant at the Rectory, who had been provided for in this curate’s house, and who knew the ways of the kind. But she had never met with any like Mr. Asquith—no one who gave so little trouble, or was so easily satisfied.