“Oh, well held, sir!” cried the senior curate, and then for a moment or two his emotion overcame him.
The vicar, still pale, recovered his balance.
“Poor little Augustus,” said my mother; “it’s the irritation.”
My father frowned at her.
“Without prejudice,” he said. And then for perhaps half a minute there was a deathly silence. It was fractured, I have been told, by myself, as the junior curate handed me back to the senior.
But my father intervened.
“Not again,” he said. “Never again; never in this world.”
The silence was resumed, broken only by myself. My father stood holding me, trembling with emotion. The vicar took a deep breath.
“Is the service to proceed?” he asked.
“Certainly,” said my father. “But in other hands.”