“And Jacky? Where has he been? I haven’t seen him since the Squire died.”
Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled letter. It ran:—
“Dear friend,—this is to say that you will not see me no more. The dear Lord tells me that I have made a cauch of it. He don’t say how, all He says is go and do better somewheres else.
“Seems to me a terrable thing to think Religion can be bad for any man. It have done me such powars of good. The late Moyle esq he was like a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no matter what. Dear friend I pored Praise into him and it come out Prayer and all for him self. But the dear Lord says I was to blame as much as Moyle esq so must do better next time but feel terrable timid.
“My respects to Masr Taffy. Dear friend I done my best I come like Nicodemus by night. Seeming to me when Christians fall out tis over what they pray for. When they praise God forget diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so no more at present from
“Yours respffly
“J. Pascoe.”
After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen Humility kept rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange the pans and kettles on the hearth. This restlessness was so unusual that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his hair, and looked up into his mother’s eyes.
“Taffy, should you like to go to Oxford?”
“Don’t, mother!”