He glanced across at Tregenna just then, and that gentleman met his eye, smiled, and the discussion being over, asked him how long he meant to stay in the west.
“Stay?” said Geoffrey sharply. “Altogether.”
Tregenna raised his eyebrows a little, and just then the young vicar, in reply to a question from Mr Penwynn, began speaking, in slow measured accents, about the vicarage to be built, and the alterations he meant to make at the church. A bright colour suffused his smooth pale face, as he found that Rhoda was listening to him, and that he was now monopolising the attention of the rest. However, he seemed to master his nervousness, and spoke out firmly and well to the end.
“You may try,” said Mr Penwynn, smiling, “but I am afraid, my dear sir, that your ideas are as Utopian as those of Mr Trethick there. However, experience teaches, as the Latin proverb goes; but, as an old inhabitant, I venture to say that before many weeks are over, both of you gentlemen will confess that you have undertaken a Herculean task. Religiously, the people of the lower orders are as wedded to Wesleyanism as in their mining tactics they are to their old-fashioned ways. Our rough Cornish folk, gentlemen, are as hard to move as our own granite.”
“Perhaps so, papa,” said Rhoda; “but we have not had many efforts made here to move them.”
“Thank you, Miss Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, flushing, and speaking with animation. “Those are the first encouraging words I have heard. Your daughter has touched the very point, Mr Penwynn. I don’t want to talk like an egotist, but, speaking as an engineer, if you will show me one of your biggest pieces of Cornish granite, I’ll find a means of giving it a start; and I’ll be bound to say that if Mr Lee here is as determined as I, he will find a way of moving the hardest of your Cornish hearts. Sir, I believe in that little word ‘Try!’”
The Reverend Edward Lee coloured slightly, and turned his glasses with more of interest upon the speaker, but he did not interpose.
“I wish you both every success,” said Tregenna, smiling first on one and then on the other, and Mr Penwynn nodded his head, and laughed, saying,—
“Youth is sanguine, Mr Trethick. Try!”
“I will, Mr Penwynn,” said Geoffrey, in a voice that, though quiet, was so full of the spirit expressed by those two determined words that Tregenna glanced sharply at him, and then at Rhoda, to see what effect they had had upon her.