Cicely, at the time when the parson, with the list of the Hearth Tax in his hand, had made his famous round of visits, had been with Sally in Horwick, and she had scarcely his acquaintance. But she was now so frequently passing up the street, or across the square, that an acquaintance grew of itself, and he often stood in conversation with her. He usually asked after her husband; and one broiling afternoon he suggested to her that there was no cooler place than the church to which he was going. She accompanied him, and they sat down on the hindermost bench.
Again he asked after her husband. “I trust he is not one of those who think that a churchgoing on their wedding-day is once too often,” he said, frankly admiring her.
“He doesn’t talk to me about it,” Cicely replied reservedly, and the parson kneaded his knuckles and gazed thoughtfully at one of the floor-boards.
“He seems to have extraordinary authority over a class of people not exactly his own,” he remarked by and by.
“Ay, they think a lot of him,” she answered evasively.
“Yes.... If he could be persuaded to come to church, a good many others would follow, I imagine. It is what I intended to ask you this afternoon. Do you think he could be persuaded?”
Cicely smiled a little. “It’s all what sort of a persuader ye are,” she said.
“Or you yourself are?” he suggested. “Suppose you were to come; he might come with you.”
“He might; ye’d better put it to him.”
“I should like you to do that. Think: you, a young wife, can do much with a word; what he does, others will do; and in your hands more than in anybody’s it rests to turn this barbarous parish to the fear of God. Or, let me put it another way....”