Biggins looked up now, his heavy face lighting up. Tom Morrison wanted him to do something for him. He could do that, if he could not show sympathy.
They walked down the neatly-kept garden, till they stood under the willow tree, where, after a few minutes’ silence, Tom Morrison said huskily—
“They’ve made you saxon now, haven’t they, Joe?”
“Yes, and ought to be clerk as well, but it don’t seem like being saxon in these newfangled days, when the ground’s cut from under a man, and there’s no chance of putting in a simple, honest amen anywhere. Ah, I don’t know what poor, dear old parson would have said to see the change. He’d think we’d all gone over to Popery.”
Tom waited till his friend, now suddenly grown voluble, had ceased.
“Joe Biggins,” he said, “didst ever know old parson—God bless him!—to refuse to bury any one out of the place because—because they wasn’t baptised?”
“Never,” said Biggins—“never,” energetically.
“He never had such a case, p’raps,” said Tom.
“Oh, but he did,” said Biggins—“even in my time. Why, there was poor Lizzy Baker’s child. You knew Sam Baker?”
Tom nodded.