"Well, I have, to tell you the truth," he said. "I should have liked to tell Mercer to make up his beastly bill and send it in to me. But I saw it wouldn't do. They wouldn't like to be dependent on us, and they wouldn't like to say no. I'll tell you what I've had to do, though, and it's a good thing that I've had a lucky stroke lately that will cover it. I've had to promise the Bishop to endow the blooming living up to the tune I was ready to pay Prescott. He wouldn't have taken it otherwise."
In her happy state of never having had occasion to consider money, she did not realise the magnitude of this obligation. "You're a little patron of the Church, darling," she said, "and they'll put you in all the papers."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he said. "I've told the old boy to keep it dark."
The Graftons happened to be in London for the week in which the Vicar took his departure. He had found out that there was no proposal on foot to present him with a testimonial, nor even to give him a farewell tea. He suffered acute annoyance over these omissions, but almost for the first time in his life kept it to himself, and pleased his wife by proposing that they should give a farewell tea themselves, to the more regular of the churchgoing parishioners. This spontaneous exhibition of liberality, coupled with the absence of any serious outbreak of censorious speech during their last weeks at Abington, led her to suppose that he also had taken to heart what had become so plain to her, and gave hope of a less stormy life in the future. But, although there may have been some faint reason for this hope, the tea-party had suggested itself as the only opportunity for delivering a speech that he had been preparing for some weeks past. If there was nobody who had the common decency, at the end of fifteen years' pastorate, to sum up the work that had been done in it, and to congratulate him upon it, he would do so himself. He had kept records of all services, classes, meetings, visits, and journeys during the whole of the time, and put together they amounted to quite a respectable total. They would see that the life of a devoted parish priest even in a country parish was not the easy thing that 'perhaps some of you here are inclined to think.' When he had added up his totals the bright idea struck him of dividing his income into them, and showing what an absurd rate of pay the devoted parish priest received for his self-sacrificing labours. But when the sum had been done he found it worked out at about six and sixpence an item, and he couldn't honestly make it less, even by omitting to reckon in the rentable value of the Vicarage. Counting that in, it came to about half-a-guinea, and however cheap his sermons might be at that price, he thought it would hardly do to give the idea that he had been paid ten and fivepence every time he had done one of his parishioners the honour of paying him or her a call. So he gave up the idea with some regret, because, of course, you couldn't really look at it in that way, and the figures were sufficiently startling if looked at in some other.
Eventually the idea of the tea-party was given up too. Regular churchgoers were found to be few in number, when the question came to be considered in detail, and of no great importance in the community. The farmers were hay-making, and without a stiffening of substantial people the affair would come down to a mere offering of a meal to a score or so of people who would rather enjoy it, which scarcely seemed worth while.
So the Vicar cast the dust of Abington from off his feet with no formal leave-taking at all, and, remembering the thirteen thousand odd engagements which he had carried out, felt some of the satisfaction of martyrdom as he stepped into the train.
The Prescotts moved in. They refused to stay at the Abbey more than a single night, and would not have stayed one if their furniture had arrived on the same day as they did. For they would not have missed the fun of a move for anything.
It was not much of a move. The contents of their two rooms in Bermondsey made more of a show than might have been expected. Viola had a pretty taste in furniture and decoration, and the year she had spent before her marriage in helping to furnish for other people had shown her the right way to set about it. They had managed to scrape together a little money and made it go a very long way. Moreover, everybody helped her. Caroline and she made curtains. Odd things not wanted at the Abbey found their way to the Vicarage and were accepted as the gifts of friends. Mr. Williams came over from Feltham and carpentered gaily. Maurice Bradby was the handy man about the place. Everybody who came to see these new, funny, delightful people got caught up in the prevailing excitement and did something, if it was only to advise somebody else.
Only the new Vicar did nothing towards the installation of his home, except appreciate it enormously. He was out all day among his parishioners, whom he found the nicest sort of people he had ever met.