“Yes, if it’s necessary.”
“Oh, it is; and you’ll put ’em raight, I know. But I say, parson—but that was a hot one for Dicky Glaire. Good-bye.”
They parted at the gate, and the vicar went in, just as Sim Slee went by with a man dressed in black—a heavy, white-faced man, with a good deal of black whiskers, who looked as if his clothes did not fit him, and as if he was uncomfortable out of a workman’s suit, and could not find a place for his hands, with which, by the aid of a great cotton handkerchief, he kept wiping his face.
“I shouldn’t wonder if that’s the deputation,” said the vicar. “Well, I hope they’ll settle the dispute.”
Unfortunately, though the vicar’s guess was right, the deputation was not a man to further the prospects of peace.