“Do they throw bricks at you?” asked Olivia, indignantly.
“Not so many as they used to do,” said Vernon, with a twinkle in his eye, which was, however, not discernible in the increasing darkness. “I found a way to cure them of that.”
“What was that?”
“I threw them back.”
Mr. Denison did not attempt to disguise the fact that his respect for and appreciation of the Church were rising rapidly. It was with a cordiality very different from the formal gratitude he had shown at the outset that he presently begged the clergyman to do himself and his wife the pleasure of lunching with them on the following or an early day.
“I am very anxious to introduce you to my wife,” said he. “She used to try hard to get me to receive what I irreverently called her ‘pet parsons;’ but I had heard them preach, and that was enough for me. Now you see I can bring forward a candidate of my own.”
“That’s unfortunate, because I can’t come to-morrow; and next day is Sunday. And perhaps, if you hear me preach, you may want to retract your invitation.”
“Well, we must chance that,” said Mr. Denison, smiling. “But I can trust a par—no, I mean a clergyman, who knows something about the tables of slate as well as the tables of stone. Remember, we are only poor farmer folk now; the glory of Streatham has departed. But we shall make you heartily welcome; and you must forgive the absence of champagne. Now, what day will you come?”
“May I say this day week?” said Vernon, after considering a moment. “For the next few days I have work to do a long way off which will make any sort of meal an impossibility. I shall live upon bread and coaldust; and you must not be surprised if I turn up with a complexion of Othello, and with a little of his savagery, after a week’s intercourse with the blackest and roughest race in Yorkshire.”
The following Friday was, therefore, fixed upon as the day on which the Rev. Vernon Brander was to make formal acquaintance with Rishton Hall Farm and its new masters. And, with a mutual liking which opened a pleasant prospect of future acquaintance, the two gentlemen bade each other good-night, and separated.