When they saw him they rose to their feet.
"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from the room. I left the window open."
"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is a most serious matter."
"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"
"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir! sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here, standing on your—or Mrs. Baker's drugget—but all my great oratorical powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest, noblest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts, and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution between every joint. And now!—I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others, but why me? I know but too surely that you have used me up." The vicar had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes, usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the world without, were now dull.
He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.
"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.
When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye, through the moisture that exuded from his head.
"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me. You have put me into your book."
"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why should you put the cap on your own head?"