Even the aged vicar was among the callers at the Post Office, inquiring if it was certain that Henry would be at home for the next Sunday, as that day was to be memorable by the preaching of Mr. Godfrey Needham's farewell sermon, and nothing would please him better than to see among his congregation "one over whom he had watched with interest and admiration from his earliest years."
Time had dealt severely with the once quaint and sprightly figure of this good man. Since Eunice had taken him in hand he had lost his old eccentric touches of habit, but year by year age had slackened his gait and slowed him down to a grey-haired, tottering figure, who, when we first saw him, took the village street like the rising wind. He had now decided to give up the hard work of his parish and his pulpit, and this was to devolve upon an alert young curate who had recently been appointed.
"We need new blood, Mr. Charles, even in the pulpit. And we old men must make way for the younger generation," he said sadly to his faithful parishioner.
"Aye, Mr. Needham, none o' us can stand up again' Natur'. But you're good for many a year yet to come, and I hope I am too."
"You are hale as ever, but I can say with the Psalmist: 'My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.'"
"True, Mr. Needham, all flesh is grass, but it is some comfort to the grass that's withering to see the new blades a-growing around it"—a speech Edward John recalled in later years as one of his happiest efforts in the art of conversation.
"Yes, if the old grass knows that the new is its seedling. You are happy, Mr. Charles, in that way."
Edward John hitched at his uncomfortable collar and modestly fingered his necktie, while Mr. Needham proceeded to sound the praises of Henry.
"But I confess," the vicar went on to say, "I am at times troubled in my mind as to how his faith has withstood the shocks it must receive in the buffetings of City life. I trust the good seed which I strove to plant in his heart as a boy has grown up unchoked by the thistles which the distractions of the world so often sow there."
"Oh, 'is 'eart's all right, Mr. Needham," said the postmaster cheerily, as the vicar shook hands with him, and moved slowly away towards his home.