“That’ll do, Mrs. Fringe, that’ll do. You can leave those flowers a little longer.”
“I ought to let you know, sir, that old Jimmy Pringle has gone off wandering again. I saw Witch-Bessie at his door when I went to the shop this morning and she told me he was talking and talking, as badly as ever he did. Far gone, poor old sinner, Witch-Bessie said he was.”
“He is a religious minded man, I believe, at bottom,” said the clergyman.
“He be stark mad, sir, if that’s what you mean! As to the rest, they say his carryings on with that harlotry down in Yeoborough was a disgrace to a Christian country.”
“I know,” said Clavering, “I know, but we all have our temptations, Mrs. Fringe.”
“Temptations, sir?” and the sandy complexioned female snorted with contempt. “And is those as takes no drop of liquor, and looks at no man edge-ways, though their own lawful partner be a stiff corpse of seven years’ burying, to be put in the same class with them as goes rampaging with harlotries?”
“He has repented, Mrs. Fringe, he has repented. He told me so himself when I met him last week.”
“Repented!” groaned the indignant woman; “he repents well who repents when he can’t sin no more. His talk, if you ask me, sir, is more scandalous than religious. Witch-Bessie told me she heard him say that he had seen the Lord Himself. I am not a learned scholar like you, sir, but I know this, that when the Lord does go about the earth he doesn’t visit hoary old villains like Jimmy Pringle—except to tell them they be damned.”
“Did he really say that?” asked the clergyman, feeling a growing interest in Mr. Pringle’s revelations.
“Yes, sir, he did, sir! Said he met God,—those were his very words, and indecent enough words I call them!—out along by Captain Whiffley’s drive-gate. You should have heard Witch-Bessie tell me. He frightened her, he did, the wicked old man! God, he said, came to him, as I might come to you, sir, quite ordinary and familiar-like. ‘Jimmy,’ said God, all sudden, as if he were a person passing the time of day, ‘I have come to see you, Jimmy.’