"Well," I said, "I had reason to know you were coming; but the Bishop is rather laconic in his epistles. He prides himself on his virtue of reticence."
I said this, because it would never do to let him suppose that the Bishop would send me a curate without letting me know of it. And I thought I was using select language, an opinion which, after the nine years and more of Horace, I have no reason to alter.
"You will take something?" I said. "You have had a long drive."
"My only mission hitherto," he said, "has been in Manchester, at St. Chad's. It was a populous mission, and quite full of those daily trials and contingencies that make life wearisome to a priest. I confess I was not sorry to have been called home."
"But you had society," I interjected, "and unless you wish to spend an hour at the constabulary barracks, you must seek your society here in an occasional conversazione with some old woman over her cross-door, or a chat with the boys at the forge—"
"But I have got my books, Father," he said, "and I assure you I want some time to brush up the little I have ever read. I haven't opened a serious book for seven years."
This was candid; and it made me warm towards him.
"Then," I said, "there's no use in preaching fine English sermons, they won't be understood. And you must be prepared for many a night call to mountain cabins, the only access to which is through a bog or the bed of a mountain stream; and your income will reach the princely sum of sixty pounds per annum. But," I added hastily, "you'll have plenty of turf, and oats and hay for your horse, an occasional pound of butter, and you'll have to export all the turkeys you'll get at Christmas."