However, those only start on the quest to whom sorrow has wept and reality spoken, though a secret joy goes with them all the way which makes the dullest path a highway of adventure.
So Andy gave up trying to write of the infinities, and yet they began to shine, somehow, through the simple things he wrote about common life.
He worked on until Sam Petch came back from his tea and desired an audience, then he put down his pen and turned to the open door with some impatience.
“Well, what is it?”
“The Primitives has got our apples,” burst forth Sam, before he was well inside the room. “For six years we’ve had the pulpit done with ’em, and the Primitives has been and got the promise of them.”
“Well, let them,” said Andy. “I don’t mind. We can use something else.”
Sam struggled to be polite, because he was a polite man, but he could not keep it out of his voice that he thought Andy a fool.
“Use something else?” he repeated. “Can’t you see, sir, what a smack in the face it is for you and the Church? Strangers come from far and near to the harvest festival. Everybody in the parish has somebody to tea for it. As far as Millsby they come from, and last year I counted no less than four Bardswell people. And they’ll all say, ‘Where’s the apples?’ For nobody ever saw such red little apples anywhere. And folks’ll have to answer back, ‘Primitives has got ’em.’ It’s a slight on you, sir, that’s what it is.”
But Andy had not yet learned that this affair, in Gaythorpe, assumed the same proportions as the seizing of a burdensome protectorate by a rival nation, and was as hurtful to the pride of the vanquished.
“It’s very good of you to bother about it,” said Andy, “but I really don’t care a bit. What does it matter whether we have red flowers with the corn or red apples?”