Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/41

THE HILL OF DREAMS remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of treating serious things was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to increase their isolation. People said they would often have liked to ask Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been such an extreme man and so queer. Indeed, a year before, Mr. Taylor had gone to a garden-party at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun of the bishop's recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that the Gervases and Dixons and all who heard him were quite shocked and annoyed. And, as Mrs. Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat was perfectly green with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like to invite Mr. Taylor again. As for the son, nobody cared to have him; Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of charity.

'I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home,' she remarked, 'so I thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way. But he is such an unsatisfactory boy, he would only have one slice of that nice plain cake, and I couldn't get him to take more than two plums. 31