In the course of conversation, Mr. Duncan mentioned the circumstance of the expected arrival of the curate, who was to come down in a very short time, and take the duty on Sunday. Mr. Barham immediately began regretting that he had not known that Mr. Duncan was inquiring for a curate: there was a young man of good family and great talent whom he should have been glad to have seen settled there—one, in fact, who was about to marry a connection of his, a cousin of his daughters—it would have been pleasant to have had them in the neighborhood: Miss Duncan would have found the lady an acquisition to their society. He very much lamented that the arrangement had been made without his knowledge.
Mr. Duncan was privately a little amused at his visitor, who, having been contented for thirty years to have no intercourse with him, could hardly have reasonably expected to be consulted on the choice of an assistant in duties with which he had no concern.
However, he answered very mildly, “that the gentleman in question was, he believed, an excellent young man, which, so far as parochial matters were concerned, was of far more consequence than either high family or astonishing talents, and he hoped no one would find reason to complain that their Vicar had been hasty or injudicious in the selection of a pastor.”
“No doubt that is very true, my dear sir,” blandly observed Mr. Barham; “virtue in a clergyman undoubtedly ranks above
all; nevertheless, the advantages of a cultivated genius and high family are not to be despised; and although there may be many men of low birth highly estimable in a moral point of view, yet it is desirable, for the sake of the character and standing of the clerical body, that there should be gentlemen also in the profession. They give a tone—an elevated tone to the whole!”
Mr. Duncan did not feel called on to reply; and after a pause, Mr. Barham added,
“I could have wished that your curate had been a man of good connections, and a certain fortune and position in society. Is he married?”
“Not yet, I understand,” replied the Vicar; “but he has promised to bring a wife as soon as his new house is ready. And I believe I may venture to answer for his connections and fortune being both good. He is a relative of Mr. Huyton of ‘the Ferns,’ who assured me he was a man of independent income.”
“Mr. Huyton of ‘the Ferns!’—how strange! What may his name be?”
“Paine—the Reverend Edward Paine.”