“At my age,” the pony would seem to reply, “I’m not likely to run very far away.”
I happened to be practising in Mr Mack’s parish for six weeks, having taken the duties of a gentleman who was gone away to get married. I drove, the parson’s pony.
“Just give him his head,” said Mr Mack on the first day that I went to visit my paupers; “he’ll take you all round.”
Not knowing anything at all about the roads, I was very pleased to leave the whole arrangement of my visits that day to Dumps. He went jogging up the road, half a mile, then down a lane, and finally brought up at a long, low, thatched cottage. Then he jerked his head round to me, as much as to say, “Get out here.”
And in the same way poor Dumps took me everywhere over the parish. Here would be a sick child to see, here a bedridden old woman, here a feeble, aged man, and so on and so forth.
The sun was set, and the stars coming out, and it appeared to me I must have still ten miles to drive before I reached the parsonage, when all at once that dear, rose-clad old cottage stood before me, and there were Mr Mack and two of his charming daughters standing at the gate laughing.
I was indeed surprised. The explanation is this: Dumps had returned by a different road. He had really and truly taken me on a round.
My friend, who had gone to get married, returned at last, and I left the glen. But happening to be on half-pay in the June of the succeeding year, I received a pressing invitation from my brother professional to spend the summer with him, and enjoy some fishing, a sport of which I am extremely fond. It was while I was at his house that a cloud shadow fell on the old parsonage, and its inmates, hitherto so quietly happy, were plunged into grief.
I did not know, nor had I any business to know, the exact history of poor Mr Mack’s trouble. From the little he told me, however, it was pretty evident that it was occasioned or arose from his own kind-heartedness: he had become security for the debts of a friend. O! it is the same old story, you see; the friend had failed to meet certain demands, and they had fallen on Mr Mack. How willingly I would have come to the kindly parson’s relief had it been in my power, and I believe he would have accepted assistance from me as soon as from any one, for I was looked upon as a friend of the family.
I could not help noticing now that it was a case of pinch, pinch, pinch with the Macks. Indeed, I fear their table no longer groaned with the weight of the good things of this life, but rather for the want of them. But for all that—let it be said to his credit—the poor of the parish never went without the dole to which they had been so long accustomed.