Chapter 17
Mr Arthur Dyson, the neighbour of Mr Peace, was dyspeptic, short- tempered, secretive. It was his misfortune that he suffered from a superiority sense, which made him a little unendurable, and certainly had not popularized him either in the surveyor's office at York or in his new post.
Possibly the superiority was based upon his foreign experience, which is one of the most oppressive forms of vanity. Though he was not a talkative man, there were moments when he would hold forth on the advantage of American institutions over British, or, alternatively, the appalling character of the American people. He was the type of Englishman in whom foreign travel creates new standards for disparagement.
He was insular, narrow, rather querulous, but above all, secretive. The people who met
