“You’re married, then?” said Andy, as they reached the house door, wishful to show interest in the domestic concerns of this ardent churchman.

“Yes,” replied the man. “My wife can’t get about much, I’m sorry to say. Legs given way. But”—he gave a queer side look at Andy—“it isn’t that she’s lost power, so to speak: the power’s only moved from her legs into her tongue.”

Andy smiled back—and when two men enjoy together the immemorial joke about a woman’s tongue it is as good as a sign of freemasonry—then he said solemnly, “Very sad for you both, I am sure.”

“Yes,” said the man, immediately solemn too. “I’m sure I don’t know what we would do if it wasn’t for William.”

“William!” repeated Andy. “Why—what is your name?”

“Samuel Petch,” said the man.

“Then it will be young Sam Petch who has taken a situation at Millsby?” demanded Andy.

“I’m young Sam Petch. Father’s old Sam Petch. He’s eighty-one.”

“Oh!” said Andy.

And almost in silence he went over the Vicarage escorted by his pleasant and obliging guide, who said at every turn, “We ought to trim honeysuckle; I only waited until you came,” or “I put a few newspapers down here, because the sun seemed to be fading the paint.”

Andy tramped up and down stairs, and peered into cellars, and found no words in which to inform young Sam Petch that his services were not required.

How was it possible in face of that trustful confidence to say abruptly, “You are mistaken. You may remove your peas, beans, and potatoes, or I will pay for them. Even your wife’s legs are nothing to me, though I deplore them. You must depart”? Andy could not do it.

At last Sam Petch went back to lock up the opened rooms while the new Vicar stood alone at his own front door. It was rather a dignified door, with pillars where roses grew and five steps leading into the garden, and Andy’s heart swelled with a proud sense of possession. Here he would stand welcoming in the senior curate who had treated him like a rather stupid schoolboy. Here the aunt and cousins who could not remember that he was a man and a clergyman would take on a proper attitude of respect. Here the 

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