“And a model parson. Eh, Cherry, these enlightened days can’t do with the old lot much longer.”
“Oh, you’re moving with the times,” said Cherry, as he came and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at the parson as he filled his pipe, and smiling at him. Perhaps no other being in the world could have got Parson Seyton to consent to such an innovation, but he loved Cheriton Lester, who little knew how much self-respect the allegiance of his high-principled, promising youth was worth to the queer old sporting parson. One atom of pretence or of priggishness in a well-conducted correct young man would have been of all things odious to him, but the shrewd old man believed in Cheriton to the backbone, and of all the admiration and affection that the popular young man had won perhaps none did him so much credit as the love that made him a sort of good angel to rough Parson Seyton.
“You got my best dog out of me when I gave you Rolla,” he said, “so I suppose you’ll have your own way now.”
“And it’ll turn out quite as well as Rolla,” said Cherry rather illogically.
Parson Seyton set about fulfilling his promise after a manner of his own.
He rapped with his dog-whip at a cottage door and thus addressed the mother:—
“Eh, Betty, there’s a grand new start in Elderthwaite. Here’s Miss Virginia going to turn all the children into first-rate scholars. Wash them up and send them over to my house on Sunday morning, and I’ll give a penny to the cleanest, and a licking to any one that doesn’t mind his manners.”
If Parson Seyton had been a school-board visitor he could hardly have put the matter more plainly, and on the whole could hardly have adopted language more likely to be effectual.