“William!” repeated Andy. “Why—what is your name?”
“Samuel Petch,” said the man.
“Then it will be young Sam Petch who has taken a situation at Millsby?” demanded Andy.
“I’m young Sam Petch. Father’s old Sam Petch. He’s eighty-one.”
“Oh!” said Andy.
And almost in silence he went over the Vicarage escorted by his pleasant and obliging guide, who said at every turn, “We ought to trim honeysuckle; I only waited until you came,” or “I put a few newspapers down here, because the sun seemed to be fading the paint.”
Andy tramped up and down stairs, and peered into cellars, and found no words in which to inform young Sam Petch that his services were not required.
How was it possible in face of that trustful confidence to say abruptly, “You are mistaken. You may remove your peas, beans, and potatoes, or I will pay for them. Even your wife’s legs are nothing to me, though I deplore them. You must depart”? Andy could not do it.
At last Sam Petch went back to lock up the opened rooms while the new Vicar stood alone at his own front door. It was rather a dignified door, with pillars where roses grew and five steps leading into the garden, and Andy’s heart swelled with a proud sense of possession. Here he would stand welcoming in the senior curate who had treated him like a rather stupid schoolboy. Here the aunt and cousins who could not remember that he was a man and a clergyman would take on a proper attitude of respect. Here the lady lay-helper who had so condescended to him in the London parish would be received, kindly, but—He held out a hand and rehearsed the greeting. The bland and prosperous Vicar on his own threshold. Quite equal to dealing with anything.
“A-hem!” coughed Sam Petch behind him.