“I had a very good congregation,” was the reply. “The farmer who bought Spielman’s Vley of my stepfather is an Englishman, an emigrant from a Berkshire village. He and his wife and grown-up children were all there, and so were nearly all the farm-servants whom he had brought with him. He told me very earnestly how it delighted him to hear the Church service. It was like a voice from Old England, he said, and he couldn’t tell me how glad they all were that a clergyman would come over from Umvalosa every alternate Sunday now, instead of once a month.”
“And I daresay, when he was in Berkshire, he didn’t think much of the Church service,” suggested Margetts.
“No, he often didn’t go, he told me, and cared very little for it when he did. And it was the same with his labourers. They seldom miss the service here. Well, it is to be hoped that they will not come to neglect it again, now it is once more within their reach.”
“But how about the ‘natives’ service’?” asked Redgy. “Could you get on with that?”
“I am afraid I made a good many blunders,” said Rivers, “especially in the sermon. However, nothing but practice will set that right.”
“You think an interpreter doesn’t answer?”
“No, I am pretty sure it doesn’t. You know what Lambert told us about his interpreter, when he first went to preach to the Kaffirs in the Knysna.”
“No, I didn’t hear the story.”
“Lambert said he was puzzled how to address them, when it occurred to him that ‘Children of the Forest’ was a title that would be sure to take their fancy, and he accordingly began his discourse to them in that way. He thought he had done it rather well, until one of his friends, who had heard him, and who was a good Kaffir scholar, told him that the interpreter had rendered his ‘Children of the Forest’ as ‘Little men of big sticks.’ That story determined me never, anyhow, to employ an interpreter.”
Redgy laughed. “I think you are right,” he said, “and your Kaffir certainly improves. By-the-bye, did you see Hardy? His house is only seven or eight miles off from Spielman’s Vley, and I am told he always goes over when there is service there.”