The answer was one which the good Bishop would much enjoy, for he had a happy sense of humour. Patting the heads of the urchins he bade them be good boys and gave them each a coin. As he strode along the street the unconscious humour of the artists in mud must have greatly tickled him.
Yet another clerical anecdote:
In her charming little volume of "Lancashire Memories,"[5] Mrs Potter gives a racy story of the new vicar of a Lancashire Parish in an encounter with one of the natives. She remarks: "There is a quaint simplicity about the country people in Lancashire, that wants a name in our vocabulary of manners, as far removed from the vulgarity of the lower orders in the town on the one hand, as from the polished conversationalisms of the higher classes on the other; a simplicity that asserts itself because of its simplicity, and that never heard, and if it did, never understood 'who's who.' Imagine the surprise of the new vicar of the parish, fresh from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in all the dignity of the shovel hat and garments of a rigidly clerical orthodoxy, accustomed to an agricultural population that smoothed down its forelocks in deference to the vicar, but never dreamed of bandying words with him: imagine him losing his way in one of his distant parochial excursions, and inquiring, in a dainty south-country accent, from a lubberly boy weeding turnips in a field, 'Pray, my boy, can you tell me the way to Bolton?'
[5] "Lancashire Memories," by Louise Potter. Macmillan & Co., London, 1879.
"'Ay,' replied the boy. 'Yo' mun go across yon bleach croft and into th' loan, and yo'll get to Doffcocker, and then yo're i' th' high road, and yo' can go straight on.'
"'Thank you,' said the vicar, 'perhaps I can find it. And now, my boy, will you tell me what you do for a livelihood?'
"'I clear up th' shippon, pills potatoes, or does oddin; and if I may be so bou'd, win yo' tell me what yo' do?'
"'Oh, I am a minister of the Gospel; I preach the Word of God.'
"'But what dun yo' do?' persisted the boy.