From all this it will be gathered, and rightly, that the Reverend Andrew Deane had obtained a living almost as soon as it was legally possible, and that he had a boyish air which made every one treat him like a boy.
“There’s a good strawberry bed in the Vicarage garden,” said Mr. Thorpe, as he settled himself in the cart. “Gee-up, mare!”
Then he seemed to think he had said all there was to say, and they jogged on silently through the quiet lanes.
After the hurry and bustle of the growing years, and the time at college, and the London curacy, Andy seemed, as he sat there, to have come out into some quiet place where he could look round and listen. He felt, unconsciously, as a man does who has stood on a country road to watch a noisy procession pass: the last straggler vanishes in the cloud of dust behind it—the clash of music and shouting dies away—and a lark that has sung unnoticed all the time, goes on singing.
This is the voice of peace grown audible at last, and those are very happy who hear it.
“H-hem,” said Mr. Thorpe, rousing himself at a sharp corner. “Funny you should be a bachelor. We seem in for unmarried parsons.”
“In the present day there are many——” began Andy. But when Mr. Thorpe started a speech he had a sort of steam-roller habit of finishing it.
“I was looking at the church-books the other day—they only go back to 1687—and the first vicar whose name stands there was a bachelor. He was there fifty years. He signed himself Will Ford, though he’s called Gulielmus now on his grave by the churchyard path. Gee-up, mare!”
But in that minute Andy saw it all, and across the centuries he greeted a brother.
“That’s the church,” said Mr. Thorpe, pulling up on the crest of a little hill and pointing with his whip towards a square tower with the roofs of a village clustering near; a flight of rooks trailed across blue sky and grey-white clouds.