“Yes, it’s a good family,” he said, “a very good family, and there’s money in it as well as religion.”
The next moment, however, his face had resumed its congestion, and as I leaned back while my mother unlaced my boots, it became increasingly evident to me that I was in the presence of a spiritual crisis of the gravest kind. Nay, even then, I remember, I had a sudden presentiment that here was a situation of no common significance, and I signalled to my mother to be as rapid as possible in bringing me my slippers and leaving us alone. Then I took a deep breath and, leaning forward a little, gently touched my father’s knee.
“Can I not help you?” I said.
My father stared at me. For perhaps a minute his lips moved convulsively. Then in a strangled voice he uttered a single word, followed a little later by fourteen other words.
“Carkeek,” he said. “It’s that fellow Carkeek. He’s been and presented the church with a lectern.”
For a moment I was utterly dumbfounded.
“A lectern?” I asked.
My father nodded.
“Made of brass,” he said, “in the image of a bird.”
“Of a bird?” I cried. “What sort of bird?”