Page:Chesterton - The Wisdom of Father Brown.djvu/182

THE WISDOM OF FATHER BROWN lips rather primly than otherwise, as he sat sipping the wine out of his tall, thin glass.

"I could see that the big man opposite me was trying, if anything, to stop him; but he evidently held the old gentleman in considerable respect, and could not venture to do so at all abruptly. And the little priest at the other end of the table, though free from any such air of fear or embarrassment, looked steadily at the table, and seemed to listen to the recital with great pain—as well he might.

You don't seem,' I said to the narrator, 'to be very fond of the Exmoor pedigree.'

"He looked at me a moment, his lips still prim, but whitening and tightening; then he deliberately broke his long pipe and glass on the table and stood up, the very picture of a perfect gentleman with the flaming temper of a fiend.

These gentlemen,' he said, 'will tell you whether I have cause to like it. The curse of the Eyres of old has lain heavy on this country, and many have suffered from it. They know there are none who have suffered from it as I have.' And with that he crushed a piece of the fallen glass under his heel, and strode away among the green twilight of the twinkling apple-trees.

"'That is an extraordinary old gentleman,' I said to the other two; 'do you happen to know 168