They all a.s.sented to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpa.s.sioned matter of parish history.

"But I can sing my treble!" continued Thomas Leaf, quite delighted at being called a fool in such a friendly way; "I can sing my treble as well as any maid, or married woman either, and better! And if Jim had lived, I should have had a clever brother! To-morrow is poor Jim's birthday.

He'd ha' been twenty-six if he'd lived till to-morrow."

"You always seem very sorry for Jim," said old William musingly.

"Ah! I do. Such a stay to mother as he'd always ha' been! She'd never have had to work in her old age if he had continued strong, poor Jim!"

"What was his age when 'a died?"

"Four hours and twenty minutes, poor Jim. 'A was born as might be at night; and 'a didn't last as might be till the morning. No, 'a didn't last. Mother called en Jim on the day that would ha' been his christening day if he had lived; and she's always thinking about en. You see he died so very young."

"Well, 'twas rather youthful," said Michael.

"Now to my mind that woman is very romantical on the matter o' children?"

said the tranter, his eye sweeping his audience.

"Ah, well she mid be," said Leaf. "She had twelve regular one after another, and they all, except myself, died very young; either before they was born or just afterwards."

"Pore feller, too. I suppose th'st want to come wi' us?" the tranter murmured.

"Well, Leaf, you shall come wi' us as yours is such a melancholy family,"

said old William rather sadly.

"I never see such a melancholy family as that afore in my life," said Reuben. "There's Leaf's mother, poor woman! Every morning I see her eyes mooning out through the panes of gla.s.s like a pot-sick winder-flower; and as Leaf sings a very high treble, and we don't know what we should do without en for upper G, we'll let en come as a trate, poor feller."

"Ay, we'll let en come, 'a b'lieve," said Mr. Penny, looking up, as the pull happened to be at that moment.

"Now," continued the tranter, dispersing by a new tone of voice these digressions about Leaf; "as to going to see the pa'son, one of us might call and ask en his meaning, and 'twould be just as well done; but it will add a bit of flourish to the cause if the quire waits on him as a body. Then the great thing to mind is, not for any of our fellers to be nervous; so before starting we'll one and all come to my house and have a rasher of bacon; then every man-jack het a pint of cider into his inside; then we'll warm up an extra drop wi' some mead and a bit of ginger; every one take a thimbleful--just a glimmer of a drop, mind ye, no more, to finish off his inner man--and march off to Pa'son Mayble. Why, sonnies, a man's not himself till he is fortified wi' a bit and a drop? We shall be able to look any gentleman in the face then without shrink or shame."

Mail recovered from a deep meditation and downward glance into the earth in time to give a cordial approval to this line of action, and the meeting adjourned.

CHAPTER IV: THE INTERVIEW WITH THE VICAR

At six o'clock the next day, the whole body of men in the choir emerged from the tranter's door, and advanced with a firm step down the lane.

This dignity of march gradually became obliterated as they went on, and by the time they reached the hill behind the vicarage a faint resemblance to a flock of sheep might have been discerned in the venerable party. A word from the tranter, however, set them right again; and as they descended the hill, the regular tramp, tramp, tramp of the united feet was clearly audible from the vicarage garden. At the opening of the gate there was another short interval of irregular shuffling, caused by a rather peculiar habit the gate had, when swung open quickly, of striking against the bank and slamming back into the opener's face.

"Now keep step again, will ye?" said the tranter. "It looks better, and more becomes the high cla.s.s of arrant which has brought us here." Thus they advanced to the door.

At Reuben's ring the more modest of the group turned aside, adjusted their hats, and looked critically at any shrub that happened to lie in the line of vision; endeavouring thus to give a person who chanced to look out of the windows the impression that their request, whatever it was going to be, was rather a casual thought occurring whilst they were inspecting the vicar's shrubbery and gra.s.s-plot than a predetermined thing. The tranter, who, coming frequently to the vicarage with luggage, coals, firewood, etc., had none of the awe for its precincts that filled the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of most of the others, fixed his eyes firmly on the knocker during this interval of waiting. The knocker having no characteristic worthy of notice, he relinquished it for a knot in one of the door-panels, and studied the winding lines of the grain.

"O, sir, please, here's Tranter Dewy, and old William Dewy, and young Richard Dewy, O, and all the quire too, sir, except the boys, a-come to see you!" said Mr. Maybold's maid-servant to Mr. Maybold, the pupils of her eyes dilating like circles in a pond.

"All the choir?" said the astonished vicar (who may be shortly described as a good-looking young man with courageous eyes, timid mouth, and neutral nose), abandoning his writing and looking at his parlour-maid after speaking, like a man who fancied he had seen her face before but couldn't recollect where.

"And they looks very firm, and Tranter Dewy do turn neither to the right hand nor to the left, but stares quite straight and solemn with his mind made up!"

"O, all the choir," repeated the vicar to himself, trying by that simple device to trot out his thoughts on what the choir could come for.

"Yes; every man-jack of 'em, as I be alive!" (The parlour-maid was rather local in manner, having in fact been raised in the same village.) "Really, sir, 'tis thoughted by many in town and country that--"

"Town and country!--Heavens, I had no idea that I was public property in this way!" said the vicar, his face acquiring a hue somewhere between that of the rose and the peony. "Well, 'It is thought in town and country that--'"

"It is thought that you be going to get it hot and strong!--excusen my incivility, sir."

The vicar suddenly recalled to his recollection that he had long ago settled it to be decidedly a mistake to encourage his servant Jane in giving personal opinions. The servant Jane saw by the vicar's face that he recalled this fact to his mind; and removing her forehead from the edge of the door, and rubbing away the indent that edge had made, vanished into the pa.s.sage as Mr. Maybold remarked, "Show them in, Jane."

A few minutes later a shuffling and jostling (reduced to as refined a form as was compatible with the nature of shuffles and jostles) was heard in the pa.s.sage; then an earnest and prolonged wiping of shoes, conveying the notion that volumes of mud had to be removed; but the roads being so clean that not a particle of dirt appeared on the choir's boots (those of all the elder members being newly oiled, and d.i.c.k's brightly polished), this wiping might have been set down simply as a desire to show that respectable men had no wish to take a mean advantage of clean roads for curtailing proper ceremonies. Next there came a powerful whisper from the same quarter:-

"Now stand stock-still there, my sonnies, one and all! And don't make no noise; and keep your backs close to the wall, that company may pa.s.s in and out easy if they want to without squeezing through ye: and we two are enough to go in." . . . The voice was the tranter's.

"I wish I could go in too and see the sight!" said a reedy voice--that of Leaf.

"'Tis a pity Leaf is so terrible silly, or else he might," said another.

"I never in my life seed a quire go into a study to have it out about the playing and singing," pleaded Leaf; "and I should like to see it just once!"

"Very well; we'll let en come in," said the tranter. "You'll be like chips in porridge, {1} Leaf--neither good nor hurt. All right, my sonny, come along;" and immediately himself, old William, and Leaf appeared in the room.

"We took the liberty to come and see 'ee, sir," said Reuben, letting his hat hang in his left hand, and touching with his right the brim of an imaginary one on his head. "We've come to see 'ee, sir, man and man, and no offence, I hope?"

"None at all," said Mr. Maybold.

"This old aged man standing by my side is father; William Dewy by name, sir."

"Yes; I see it is," said the vicar, nodding aside to old William, who smiled.

"I thought you mightn't know en without his ba.s.s-viol," the tranter apologized. "You see, he always wears his best clothes and his ba.s.s-viol a-Sundays, and it do make such a difference in a' old man's look."

"And who's that young man?" the vicar said.

"Tell the pa'son yer name," said the tranter, turning to Leaf, who stood with his elbows nailed back to a bookcase.

"Please, Thomas Leaf, your holiness!" said Leaf, trembling.

"I hope you'll excuse his looks being so very thin," continued the tranter deprecatingly, turning to the vicar again. "But 'tisn't his fault, poor feller. He's rather silly by nature, and could never get fat; though he's a' excellent treble, and so we keep him on."

"I never had no head, sir," said Leaf, eagerly grasping at this opportunity for being forgiven his existence.

"Ah, poor young man!" said Mr. Maybold.

"Bless you, he don't mind it a bit, if you don't, sir," said the tranter a.s.suringly. "Do ye, Leaf?"

"Not I--not a morsel--hee, hee! I was afeard it mightn't please your holiness, sir, that's all."

The tranter, finding Leaf get on so very well through his negative qualities, was tempted in a fit of generosity to advance him still higher, by giving him credit for positive ones. "He's very clever for a silly chap, good-now, sir. You never knowed a young feller keep his smock-frocks so clane; very honest too. His ghastly looks is all there is against en, poor feller; but we can't help our looks, you know, sir."