Ford, the Vicar of Little Fairfield. Mark worked
steadily, and existence in Oxfordshire went by without any great
adventures of mind, body, or spirit. Life at the Rectory had a kind of
graceful austerity like the well-proportioned Rectory itself. If Mark
had bothered to analyze the cause of this graceful austerity, he might
have found it in the personality of the Rector's elder sister Miriam.
Even at Meade Cantorum, when he was younger, Mark had been fully
conscious of her qualities; but here they found a background against
which they could display themselves more perfectly. When they moved from
Buckinghamshire and the new rector was seeing how much Miriam
appreciated the new surroundings, he sold out some stock and presented
her with enough ready money to express herself in the outward beauty of
the Rectory's refurbishing. He was luckily not called upon to spend a
great deal on the church, both his predecessors having maintained the
fabric with care, and the fabric itself being sound enough and
magnificent enough to want no more than that. Miriam, though shaking one
of those capable and well-tended fingers at her beloved brother's
extravagance, accepted the gift with an almost childish determination to
give full value of beauty in return, so that there should not be a
servant's bedroom nor a cupboard nor a corridor that did not display the
evidence of her appreciation in loving care.
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