He had to work through so many sentiments which did him credit that Janey despaired of making him understand, of ever getting him to listen to her.
"Miss Blinkett's marrow is always under the pulpit," she repeated anxiously. "No, the Ringers' Arch is not considered such an important place as the pulpit. The people simply love it, and will be disappointed if they don't see it there as usual. And Miss Blinkett will be deeply hurt. She is hurt now, though she does not show it."
At last her words took effect, and Mr. Black was guided into becoming the last man to wound the feelings of one of his parishioners. Greatly to Janey's relief, the marrow was presently seen once more to ascend the aisle, was assisted out of its wheelbarrow by Mr. Black himself and installed on a bed of moss at the pulpit foot; Miss Black standing coldly aloof during the transaction, while Miss Conder, short-sighted and heavy-footed, walked backwards into an arrangement of tomatoes and dahlias in course of construction round the reading-desk.
Mr. Black and his sister had had an amicable discussion the evening before as to the decoration of the church, and especially of the pulpit, for this their first Harvest Thanksgiving at Riff. They had both agreed, with a cordiality which had too often been lacking in their conversations of late, that they would make an effort to raise the decoration to a higher artistic level than in the other churches in the neighbourhood, some of which had already celebrated their Harvest Thanksgivings. Miss Black had held up to scorn the naïve attempts of Heyke and Drum, at which her brother had preached the sermon, and he had smiled indulgently and had agreed with her.
But Riff was his first country post, and he had not been aware until he stepped into it, of the network of custom which surrounded Harvest decoration, typified by Miss Blinkett's vegetable marrow. With admirable good sense, he adjusted himself to the occasion, and shutting his ears to the hissing whispers of his sister, who for the hundredth time begged him not to be weak, gave himself up to helping his parishioners in their own way. This way, he soon found, closely resembled the way of Heyke and Drum, and presently he was assisting Mrs. Nicholls to do "Thy Will be Done" in her own potatoes, backed by white paper roses round the base of the majestic monument of the Welyshams of Swale, with its two ebony elephants at which Harry always looked with awe and admiration.
As he and Janey were tying their bunches of barley to its high iron railings, a telegram was brought to her. Telegrams were not so common twenty years ago as they are now, and Janey's heart beat. Her mind flew to Roger. Had he had some accident? She knew he had gone to Noyes about the bridge.
She opened it and read it, and then looked fixedly at Harry, stretching his hand through the railing to stroke the elephants and whisper gently to them. She almost hated him at that moment.
She folded up the telegram and sought out Mr. Black, who, hot and tired, and with an earwig exploring down his neck, was now making a cardboard dais for Sayer's loaf of bread.
"My brother Dick is dead," she said. "I must go home at once. Harry can stay and finish the railings. He knows exactly how to do them, and he has been looking forward to helping for days."