“The Reverend,” as his parishioners frequently called him, was sitting in his study, tranquilly reading his Times, when William Faithfull was ushered in.
“You’ll have heard the noos, sir,” he began abruptly; “old Abel Jesty up to the Pure Drop, he’s gone at last.”
“Oh!” said the Rector, looking rather startled; “that’s sudden, isn’t it?”
“’E-es,” said William, with a wooden face; “sudden but not unpre-pared. Martha has been a-lookin’ for en to go this ten year.”
“Oh!” said the Rector again, this time a little uncertainly.
“’E-es,” resumed William; “I thought I’d call an’ tell ye, so as ye need lose no time in settling things.”
“About the funeral, I suppose you mean?” put in the clergyman as he paused.
“No,” said William, who was gazing not only over the Rector’s head, but apparently through the wall at some distant sky-line; “about the weddin’—mine an’ Martha’s. Ye mid call us over on Sunday.”
“Really, William, I think that is too sudden,” said the Rector; “why, the poor old man won’t have been dead a week!”
“He be so dead as ever he’ll be,” returned William, still gazing impenetrably at that far point in an imaginary horizon. “Martha an’ I have a-made it up years ago, an’ settled as she’d not keep me waitin’ no longer after her father was took. I’ll thank ye to call us home, sir.”