"I'll be bound you're talking of our young parson," exclaimed a jovial voice, as the door of the school-master's little room was thrown open, and Ben Stone, the stout carpenter, entered. Ben Stone always considered himself a privileged person, and usually omitted tapping for admittance. "I never care to knock," quoth the jovial carpenter, "unless I've a hammer in my hand, and a nail to drive in, and then there's a knocking and no mistake." Stone came in, nodded a good-evening to Persis, and taking possession of a chair by the fire, as if he felt perfectly at home, he stretched out his broad hands to the cheerful blaze, for the weather was rather cold.
"You were talking of the young parson," he continued; "he's not one to conjure money out of folks' pockets. Did you ever hear such a sermon? What had all the silver and gold, and shittim wood, and precious onyx-stones, that he talked of, to do with repairing a set of old almshouses? Our people might open their eyes wide at his grand words, but they kept their purses close shut, I take it."
"The sermon had plenty of meaning; there had been much study spent upon it," observed Franks, who disliked criticism on preachers, and who had besides a kindly feeling towards the young Curate of Colme.
"Meaning! Oh, I dare say, if one could get at it," laughed the carpenter; "but when one wants to give a loaf of bread to a hungry man, one does not generally stick it at the top of a pole; there's not every one as can climb as you do, Ned Franks, or bring down onyx-stones and shittim wood to patch up rotten deal timbers. Why, there was but one little bit of gold to-day in the plate, and a scanty sprinkling of silver, though one might have thought the state of those wretched cottages would have preached loud enough of itself."
Persis and Ned could have told where that one little bit of gold had come from, and why it was that a certain hearth-rug with a pattern of lilies and roses which had taken the fancy of the school-master's wife, and was to have been a present from her husband on the anniversary of their wedding, still hung up in Grant's shop, while their old one, faded and patched, still kept its place in front of their fire. But these family matters were things which the Franks never cared to talk of to others; they had given the gold with cheerful hearts, as a joint-offering to the Lord; and though it was more from them than a thousand pounds would have been from Sir Lacy Barton, they never thought that there was any merit in the little sacrifice which they had made.
"I dare say," continued Ben Stone, "that Mr. Claudius Leyton is a fine scholar, but he's no more fitted for parish work than a gimlet is to saw through a plank." While the carpenter was picking holes in the curate's preaching, he was at the same time, unconsciously of course, picking another with the end of his stick in Persis's unfortunate rug. "Why, he's afraid of the sound of his own voice, and can't so much as touch his hat to you, without blushing up to his eyes. It was rare fun to see him yesterday. He came to my workshop in the morning, to ask me where he could find Mrs. Sands, the wife of our clerk. 'Now,' thinks I, 'I know well enough why you want to visit Nancy. She showed in the face of half the village yesterday, that she had had a drop too much, and you think that it's a parson's business to reprove as well as to teach. But if you ever screw up your courage to rebuke Nancy Sands, I'll give my new hatchet for a two-penny nail!' I told the young parson where Sands's cottage lay, just in sight of my own, and I watched him as he slowly walked towards it. I'd half a mind to go after him, and see how such a lamb of a shepherd would manage such a vixen of a sheep. I marked him shaking his head slightly as he walked, as if he were conning over what he should say; and though I could only see his back, I could just fancy the anxious, uneasy look on his smooth young face."
"Poor young clergyman!" said Persis. "He was about the most painful of all a minister's duties. I should be very sorry myself to have to rebuke Nancy Sands."
"Something like having to pull out a tigress's teeth!" laughed Ben Stone, who had succeeded in making a large hole out of a very little one in the old rug. "But Mr. Leyton never got so far as the pulling! I watched him, would you believe it, walk three times up and down before the gate of Nancy's little garden; it was clear he couldn't screw up his courage to go in. Then she chanced to come out of her door. Maybe she was wondering why the parson took that bit of road for his quarter-deck walk, or she guessed what he was after, and thought she would brave out the business."
"Do you know what passed between the two?" inquired Franks.
"I saw Mr. Leyton raise his hat a bit, in his very polite way, and Nancy drop a little saucy bob of a courtesy, as who should say, 'What have you come here for?' and almost immediately afterwards the parson walked away a good deal quicker than he had walked to the place. I was curious to know what had passed, so I put down my saw, and went up the road to Nancy, who was still in her garden, pulling up groundsel; she has a rare crop of it there, and little besides. 'What said the young parson to you, Nancy?' says I. 'Oh!' says she, 'he hummed and hawed a bit, and then told me—as if I didn't know it afore—that as his uncle is ill he has come to this here place to do duty for him, and that I must remember;' and at that he stuck and stammered and blushed, so I took him up sharp, and I says,—says I (Ben Stone mimicked the insolent toss of Nancy's head as he repeated her words), 'Yes, I remember this aint the first time as you've been at Colme; your mother brought you to the vicarage afore you was out of petticoats; that aint so very long ago.'"