What a parody Calverley would have made:
“They hunted for moths in the Rector’s garden,
And though they possibly no harm meant,
They littered the pew of the Churchwarden:
They spoiled the gold of the Tenth Commandment.”
That is a bad rhyme: I am not equal to the task. The case was serious: what did I suggest?
I said it was rather out of my province: bats never built in schools: had he tried incense?
His eyes were again fixed intently on me, but I gazed at the roof. It seemed that the good man was Low. How was I to know? Finally he gave me credit for guilelessness. “But what would the Archdeacon say?” I inferred that the Archdeacon also was Low. Certainly the bats were High.
It is sad that I cannot carry the tale further. Did he try the remedy? I cannot but think that
“good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke,”
such as Browning’s Bishop loved to taste, would have evicted the cheiroptera. Fear of the Archdeacon might have held the Rector’s hand when Divine Service was toward, but I suspect he would still have six week-days undisturbed.
This was not the only instance of want of practical common-sense in the management of the freehold. Another incumbent remarked to me that he couldn’t understand why his people didn’t come to church. I thought it might be that his preaching was deterrent, but politeness suggested “the singing?”
“Oh no; it isn’t the singing: there’s plenty of that. To be sure,” he added pensively, as if the thought came to him for the first time, “it may be that it is because there is no heating apparatus.”