"I didn't like the last parson we had, nor the style of them who set themselves up as great Christians."
"What about Joe Benton?"
"Oh, he's all right as fer as he's concerned, an' so is his wife. But what has religion done fer their family, I'd like to know? Their boys are all wild, an' I've heard stories about the girls since they left home."
Jake paused and bit thoughtfully at a blade of grass he was holding in his hand.
"But it ain't the Bentons I'm thinkin' so much about," he continued. "There are others. Look at Mike Gibband, fer instance, an' him a churchwarden, too. Why, he swears like a trooper, an' would do a man a mean trick whenever he could. I could tell ye what he did to poor widder Stanley."
"What was wrong with the last clergyman you had?" Douglas questioned.
"Well, he was mighty stuck up, an' thought it beneath himself to soil his nice white hands at anything. You should have seen the way he kept his barn over there. Why, it was a fright. An' as fer his knowledge of farmin', he didn't know a thing, and as fer as I could see he didn't want to. Bless my soul, he couldn't tell a bean from a pea, nor a carrot from a turnip."
"But a man might not know anything about such things and yet be a good clergyman," Douglas reasoned.
"That's very true," and Jake ran his fingers through his hair. "We would have overlooked sich things if he had been all right as a parson. But he wasn't, fer he used no tact, an' got Si Stubbles down on him, an' so that finished him as fer as this parish is concerned."
"Did all the people follow Mr. Stubbles in disliking the clergyman?"