“Do you expect it will be?” I was getting cooler now.
“I don’t know,” he answered, very gravely for him, for Ephraim is not at all given to moroseness and long faces. “God grant it never may!”
I could not think what he meant, and I did not like to ask him. Indeed, I had not much opportunity, for he began talking about our journey, and Brocklebank, and all the people there, and I was so interested that we did not get back to what Ephraim came to see.
There is a new Vicar, he says, whose name is Mr Liversedge, and he has quite changed things in the parish. The people are divided about him; some like him, and some do not. He does not read his sermons, which is very strange, but speaks them out just as if he were talking to you; and he has begun to catechise the children in an afternoon, and to visit everybody in the parish; and he neither shoots, hunts, nor fishes. His sermons have a ring in them, says Ephraim; they wake you up, Old John Oakley complains that he can’t nap nigh so comfortable as when th’ old Vicar were there; and Mally Crosthwaite says she never heard such goings on—why, th’ parson asked her if she were a Christian!—she that had always kept to her church, rain and shine, and never missed once! and it was hard if she were to miss the Christmas dole this year, along o’ not being a Christian. She’d always thought being Church was plenty good enough—none o’ your low Dissenting work: but, mercy on us, she didn’t know what to say to this here parson, that she didn’t! A Christian, indeed! The parson was a Christian, was he? Well, if so, she didn’t make much ’count o’ Christians, for all he was a parson. Didn’t he tell old John he couldn’t recommend him for the dole, just by reason he rapped out an oath or two when his grand-daughter let the milk-jug fall?—and if old Bet Donnerthwaite had had a sup too much one night at the ale-house, was it for a gentleman born like the parson to take note of that?
“But he has done worse things than that, Cary,” said Ephraim, with grave mouth and laughing eyes.
“What? Go on,” said I, for I saw something funny was coming.
“Why, would you believe it?” said Ephraim. “He called on Mr Bagnall, and asked him if he felt satisfied with the pattern he was setting his flock.”
“I am very glad he did!” said I. “What did Mr Bagnall say?”
“Got into an awful rage, and told it to all the neighbourhood—as bearing against Mr Liversedge, you understand.”
“Well, then, he is a greater simpleton than I took him for,” said I.