“Good old chap, Evans,” said the Squire: “parish couldn’t get on without him; but he gets bothered a bit when you fellows come round every autumn. Runs the school from nine to four; keeps the accounts of a small quarry, and of a Co-operative Store at night: measures land for the farmers on Saturdays.”
“Helps me with my figures on Saturdays, too,” murmured Harry, whose education had been severely classical.
“Runs Sunday School on Sundays, and plays the organ in Church,” continued the Squire.
“With approximate accuracy,” added Harry in a carping spirit; “gets a foot on the wrong pedal now and then.” It seemed that Harry was choirmaster; and choirmaster and organist are like Bishop and Dean.
“Extraneous duties: hard work,” said I professionally.
“But good pay,” pleaded the Rector: “one way and another he gets not less than £250, with house, garden and coal.”
I admitted that this was better than the Bar; but a man who could measure an irregularly polygonous field with a semi-circular bulge in it was worth all that.
David Nantgwyn sagely remarked that some of these men were better than others. Harry interpolated the offensive comment that this differentiation applied equally to Vicars. David waved him aside with an “Avaunt, stripling,” and proceeded with a recent painful experience. His school had been vacant, and a man had applied with a testimonial from the Rural Dean, deposing that Mr. A. B. was equally admirable whether you regarded him as a schoolmaster or as a Christian—“rather implying, you know, that they are separate walks in life”—in the former capacity he was most efficient; in the latter he was exemplary. David went to see the Rural Dean, and asked his real opinion of A. B. The reply was that A. B. was a reprobate person: he had been dismissed for a series of offences, culminating in brawling in church with suspicions of intemperance.
“But, Good Heavens,” David had objected, “you stated in black and white that he was ‘equally efficient’ and all the rest of it.”
The Rural Dean was entirely unabashed: “that was only a tes-ti-mo-ni-al.”