“Church did very well for t’ owd rector, and always has done,” was the cry; “why won’t it do for he?”
“Festina lente,” said the Reverend Eli to himself; and he set to work slowly, cautiously, and well, making such advance in his undertaking that plenty of money was promised, and he saw in the future a handsome, well-warmed church, with all the surroundings for reverent worship.
“Poor old fellow!” he had said to himself as he listened to the clerk, for the old man would utter the three first words of a response in a shrill tenor, and then drop his voice, nothing, else being heard until it came to the end, when to a new-comer his peculiar “Hup-men” was almost startling in its strangeness.
“Week, week, week; wubble, wubble, wubble,” the school-children always declared he said, no matter what was the response; and then, after giving out the psalm or hymn so that no one could hear, the poor old fellow would sing in a shrill unmusical voice from behind a huge pair of tortoiseshell framed spectacles, holding his great hymn-book with both hands, and emphasising the words he sang by raising and lowering the book; turning to right and left, singing to the people below his desk, and then at the huge whitewashed beams of the ceiling, before turning three parts round to send his voice into the chancel, for the benefit of the old women from the Bede houses who sat there upon a very uncomfortable bench.
“I dare say it is very wrong,” said Lord Artingale, who had ridden over from Gatton one Sunday to welcome the Mallows back to Lincolnshire, “but much as I want to be reverent, I really don’t think I could go to your church again, Mr Mallow, without laughing in the middle of the service.”
The Rector looked grave, for poor old Warmoth was a great trouble to him, and, as may be gathered, he had consulted the churchwardens on the question of the alterations, and among other things suggested that the old clerk should be asked to resign.
The effect we have seen, and that same day Portlock, the farmer, went up and told the result of his chat with the old clerk.
“It is very provoking, Mr Portlock, very. I want the old man to go quietly—in fact, to resign,” said the Rector. “If I send him away the people will say that he is ill-used.”
“That they will, depend on’t,” replied the Churchwarden. “Our folk take a deal o’ driving.”
“Well, well; what is to be done?”