Mr. Kirke stopped.
“Something to have a harvest festival about this year,” he said. “When you see the crops all black in the fields——” he paused. “Fine congregation to-night. And the way the hymns went——” He paused and puffed again at his pipe. “Mr. Thorpe tells me there was no less than nineteen and tenpence in the collection bags. Last year it was only eleven shillings odd.”
The two men’s voices were softened and mellowed by the night air—they felt friendly towards one another. The schoolmaster refilled his pipe as he too leaned against the gate, but in a decorous attitude which expressed his sense of being rather honoured.
“My aunt thinks I must be frightfully lonely here,” said Andy, unconsciously trying to bring the talk round to the subject of which his mind was full. “She thinks”—he laughed a little—“that I ought to get a wife.”
Mr. Willie Kirke settled his shoulders more intimately against the gate—for that is a subject in which bachelors of all ages feel an interest at times—it is somehow pleasantly tickling to think what the poor women have missed through their abstinence.
“Well,” said Mr. Kirke, striking a match that flamed on his narrow face and bottle shoulders as he lighted his pipe, “I don’t know if you lose more’n you gain or gain more’n you lose by remaining unmarried. There was only one girl I ever——” Puff. Puff.
“What did she——?” said Andy, through a sympathetic pause.
“Oh, married a butcher! But I never asked her.”
“Should you——” Now was Andy’s chance.
“Should you think if a man were silly enough to propose that he’d better do it by letter or in person?”