Christ was a sort of an Englishman and Englishmen did not as a rule refuse to do their jobs

He doubted, however, whether Christ would have refused to manage Groby had it been his job. Christ was a sort of an Englishman and Englishmen did not as a rule refuse to do their jobs...They had not used to; now no doubt they did. It was a Russian sort of trick. He had heard that even before the revolution great Russian nobles would disperse their estates, give their serfs their liberty, put on a hair shirt and sit by the roadside begging...Something like that. Perhaps Christopher was a symptom that the English were changing. He himself was not. He was just lazy and determined—and done with it!

F.M. Ford, The last post (1928) [Parade's End], 803