"You might have warned us that he was a Comic Turn," Cyprian told Haddock reproachfully.
"Describe him to me again at our next meeting," said the Colonel, for whom Jellybrand betrayed a pathetically guileless admiration.
"Uncle Ricky has always had a number of the queerest friends," Ferlie whispered. "Generally they are lame dogs who would have perished in some one of the world's ditches but for him. This one, at any rate, seems too nearly an imbecile to take any interest in the obstruse riddles of our existence."
The jungle road, strewn with bamboo leaves, twisted them out on to a cleared space among the coco-nut trees, where a tiny church, which would have lost itself in an ordinary-sized drawing-room, stood on stilts, as indeed, did everything in the form of a building, so that, to reach the platforms on which they were built, it was necessary to run up a short step-ladder.
The interior of the church was fraught with the pathos of primitive endeavour. There was a crucifix, smothered in fading hibiscus heads; a great many common candles, some of which were, nakedly, two shortened corpses stuck one on top of the other to attain the regulation length; a canopy of bamboo and coloured paper, enshrining a Madonna with a broken nose imperfectly mended by means of hot wax, which gave her a somewhat rakish appearance; the crudest of moral-enforcing missionary prints; a framed St. Paul (after whom the building was named) so literally "in the pink" as to impress one instantaneously with his possible value in a football scrum, and—Oh, lift up your heads!—a small shiny harmonium on which the little padre had, in the course of a year, just learnt to accompany his flock with one finger, though he had not yet given up hope of bringing the other nine into requisition somewhen. For the rest, they relied upon a catechist with a concertina, who knew seven hymns which he performed in strict rotation.
"But now that you have come..." said Jellybrand, eyeing Ferlie with eager expectancy. And she had not the heart to erect a barrier of doctrinal differences, for her protection, between his hungry enthusiasm and the harmonium stool.
"I see you have started a shop," said Colonel Maddock emerging from a thatched fastness, wherein lay heaped up some yards of calico, red flannel, a few tin pots and pans, coloured prints, packets of tea, pounds of sugar and several bright glass necklaces.
"Oh, dear me, yes. W-would you believe it? Mr. Pell, here—w-where are you, Mr. Pell?—a most unselfish person, w-who always acts on the excellent principle that it is more blessed to give than to receive, w-was left in charge of the shop w-when I w-was over at Nankauri, visiting. And—w-would you believe it?—he gave every single thing away w-without taking any coco-nuts in payment! Of course, the people are ready now to let the Government start any number of shops...."
Mr. Pell, hitching up the nether garments which were the outward and visible sign of his inward state of grace, beamed urbanely upon the newcomers.
"This," said Jellybrand, indicating a gentleman with a string of cowrie shells about his middle and a battered English straw upon his head, "is Friend-of-England, the chief of the village. He is not yet a member of my little community though he w-wishes us w-well, I am sure.