She had an uncle at the Rectory as well as at the Hall, but there were no young people in the clerical house. This was how things stood with the Prescotts and Mary Burnet, when the new curate arrived, of whom Uncle Hugh at the Rectory had heard so very good an account. Uncle Hugh was a very conscientious clergyman. He liked to keep the parish in thoroughly good working order, but if truth must be told he preferred that some one else should do the work for him. He had the very best recommendations with the new curate. He was hard-working, he was moderate, not too much of a ritualist, and yet a very good Churchman, and a man who socially took nothing upon him; a retiring, modest young man. The Rector was most fortunate in getting a curate like Mr. Asquith, everybody said.
CHAPTER II.
ONLY THE CURATE.
A CURATE is a very useful member of the Church militant. He is the stuff out of which all its more dignified functionaries are made; and he does a great deal of the hard work, with a very limited proportion of the pay. But notwithstanding all this, he has a great deal to put up with in the way of snubs from his superiors, and indifference from the public, who accept his services often without prizing them very much. He has compensation in his youth, which makes him acceptable to the younger and fairer portion of the flock, and in his hopes of better things, as well as, no doubt, to leave pleasantry apart, in the satisfaction of performing important duties, and doing the sacred work to which he has dedicated himself.
Mr. Asquith, the new curate at Horton, had, however, but few of the compensations. There was a very small number of young ladies in the parish, and he was a young man who did not give himself to croquet or archery, or any of the gentle games then in vogue; for the period of which I speak was before the invention of lawn tennis. To none of these things did he incline. He was ready to tramp along the country roads in dust or in mud to carry consolation to any poor sick-bed. He was never tired with examining schools, catechizing children, conducting little cottage services; for those were the days when a high ritual was unusual, and daily prayers were rare in the churches. He would even interest himself in the village cricket, if need was, though awkwardly, and not in a way which impressed the rustic eleven. As for the minor organisations of the parish, the savings-banks, the clothing clubs, the lending library, they had no existence until he came.
The Rector frankly thought them quiet unnecessary; and Mrs. Prescott was of opinion that to set them a-going was a dangerous thing, and might put such a burden upon the next curate who should succeed Mr. Asquith as that problematical individual might not care to bear; and of course, she added, nobody could expect the Rector himself to be charged with the fatigue of keeping all these new-fangled institutions up.
Mr. Asquith paid little attention to these remonstrances. So long as he had permission to do what he thought right, even if it were only a formal permission, he was satisfied: and he went on working among his poor people, with the greatest indifference to any of those solaces, in the way of society and the making of friends, which are generally supposed to sweeten the lot of his class. He said “Bother!” when he was told that he was expected to be on certain occasions a guest at the Rectory; and he said “What a bore!” when he was invited to dine at the Hall. None of these delights tempted him. When John Prescott called on him, as in duty bound, he found the curate busy among calculations, planning out one of those village charities which were wanting in Horton, and rather abstracted and preoccupied—dull, John said, who was himself the dullest of men.