“Best let things bide as they are, sir; you wean’t do any good by trying to alter ’em.”
“Oh, but that is absurd, Mr Portlock, highly absurd. No, I regret it very much, but he must go. There, I will see him myself.”
The Rector saw the old clerk sooner than he expected, for in crossing the churchyard next day he met him going up to the church.
“Poor old fellow! ninety-three,” said the Rector to himself, as he looked curiously at the strange old figure tottering up the rough cobble-stone path.
“Good-morning, Warmoth,” he said. “Here, give me your hand.”
The old man stopped short, thumped his stick down, and peered up fiercely.
“Nay, nay, nay,” he groaned, “not so owd as all that, mester. I can do it yet. Let me bide, I’m reight yet. Yow want to get shut o’ me—to drift me off. Yow thowt wi’ your new ways that I wasn’t good enew for t’ church, but revvylootion or no revvylootion, I stick to church as my fathers did afore me. When I’m down theer, and can howd out no more, thou mun do thy worst.”
“That’s all put aside, Mr Warmoth,” said the Rector, smiling. “I do want to make improvements here, but not to that extent. I did not want to hurt your feelings. Come, shake hands.”
“Nay; I’ll not,” cried the old man, fiercely, his bearing seeming to have wonderfully altered now. “Thou want’st to get round me wi’ soft words, but I’ll howd thee off—I’ll howd thee off. There ain’t every servant of t’ owd church like me, and I’ll howd my own unto the last.”
“My good old fellow, Heaven forbid that I should be guilty of so unkind an act. You shall stop on, Warmoth, till the last, for no act of mine shall remove you from your post.”