Some of the men were even more severe in their remarks, and swore that if the parson was going to preach in that style, they would not show their noses inside the church. Others threatened to go off to the methodists’ house in the next village, where the minister never troubled the people with disagreeable remarks.
I did not tell my father all I had heard, as I knew it would annoy him. It did not occur to me at the moment that he had introduced the subject for the sake of currying favour with Sir Reginald, indeed I did not think such an idea had crossed his mind.
He was greatly surprised in the afternoon, when the service was generally better attended than in the morning, to find that only half his usual congregation was present. When he returned home, after making some visits in the parish, on the following Tuesday, he told us he suspected from the way he had been received that something was wrong, but it did not occur to him that his sermon was the cause of offence.
I, in the meantime, was spending my holidays in far from a satisfactory manner. My elder brothers amused themselves without taking pains to find me anything to do, while Ned was always at his books, and was only inclined to come out and take a constitutional walk with me now and then. My younger brothers were scarcely out of the nursery, and I was thus left very much to my own resources. I bethought me one day of paying the old sailor Roger Riddle a visit, and perhaps getting his son Mark to come and fish with me.
I told Ned where I was going, and was just setting off when he called out—
“Stop a minute, Dick, and I will go with you; I should like to make the acquaintance of the old sailor, who, from your account, must be something above the common.”
I did not like to refuse, at the same time I confess that I would rather have gone alone, as I knew that Ned did not care about fishing, and would probably want to stop and talk to Roger Riddle.
I was waiting for him outside in front of the house, when a carriage drove up full of boys, with a gentleman who asked me if my father was at home. I recognised him as a Mr Reynell, who lived at Springfield Grange, some five or six miles inland. Two of the boys were his sons, whom I knew; the others, he told me, were their cousins and two friends staying with them.
“We are going to have a picnic along the shore, and we want you and your brother to come and join us,” said Harry Reynell, the eldest of the two.
Ned came out directly afterwards, and said he should be very happy to go.