The Concert.
“But I will wear my own brown gown
And never look too fine.”
Months came and went. August turned his beaming yellow face on the waving cornfields, and passed on leaving them shorn and bare. Then came September bending under his weight of apples and pears, and after him October, who took away the green mantle the woods had worn all the summer, and gave them one of scarlet and gold. He spread on the ground, too, a gorgeous carpet of crimson leaves, which covered the hillside with splendour so that it glowed in the distance like fire. Here and there the naked branches of the trees began to show sharply against the sky—soon it would be winter. Already it was so cold, that although it was earlier than usual Miss Ellen said they must begin to think of warming the church, and to do this they must have some money, and therefore the yearly village concert must be arranged.
“It was the new curate as come to me about it,” said the cobbler to Mr Dimbleby one evening. “‘You must give us a solo on the clar’net, Mr Snell,’ says he.”
“He’s a civil-spoken young feller enough,” remarked Mr Dimbleby, “but he’s too much of a boy to please me. The last was the man for my money.”
“Time’ll mend that,” said Joshua. “And what I like about him is that he don’t bear no sort of malice when he’s worsted in argeyment. We’d been differing over a passage of Scripture t’other day, and when he got up to go, ‘Ah, Mr Snell,’ says he, ‘you’ve a deal to learn.’ ‘And so have you, young man,’ says I. Bless you, he took it as pleasant as could be, and I’ve liked him ever since.”
He turned to Bella Greenways, who had just entered.
“And what’s your place in the programme, Miss Greenways?”
Bella always avoided speaking to the cobbler if she could, for while she despised him as a “low” person, she feared his opinion, and knew that he disapproved of her. She now put on her most mincing air as she replied:
“Agnetta and me’s to play a duet, the ‘Edinburgh Quadrilles,’ and Mr Buckle accompanies on the drum and triangle.”