e most friendly assistant to
his tongue could do no more for him now, and that he must be left to his
own resources.

"Yes, sir: a widder, sir. Ah, if brother Jim had lived she'd have had a
clever son to keep her without work!"

"Indeed! poor woman. Give her this half-crown. I'll call and see your
mother."

"Say, 'Thank you, sir,'" the tranter whispered imperatively towards Leaf.

"Thank you, sir!" said Leaf.

"That's it, then; sit down, Leaf," said Mr. Maybold.

"Y-yes, sir!"

The tranter cleared his throat after this accidental parenthesis about
Leaf, rectified his bodily position, and began his speech.

"Mr. Mayble," he said, "I hope you'll excuse my common way, but I always
like to look things in the face."

Reuben made a point of fixing this sentence in the vicar's mind by gazing
hard at him at the conclusion of it, and then out of the window.

Mr. Maybold and old William looked in the same direction, apparently
under the impression that the things' faces alluded to were there
visible.

"What I have been thinking"--the tranter implied by this use of the past
tense that he was hardly so discourteous as to be positively thinking it
then--"is that the quire ought to be gie'd a little time, and not done
away wi' till Christmas, as a fair thing between man and man. And, Mr.
Mayble, I hope you'll excuse my common way?"

"I will, I will. Till Christmas," the vicar murmured, stretching the two
words to a great length, as if the distance to Christmas might be
measured in that way. "Well, I want you all to understand that I have no
personal fault to find, and that I don't wish to change the church music
by forcible means, or in a way which should hurt the feelings of any
parishioners. Why I have at last spoken definitely on the subject is
that a player has been brought under--I may say pressed upon--my notice
several times by one of the churchwardens. And as the organ I brought
with me is here waiting" (pointing to a cabinet-organ standing in the
study), "there is no reason for longer delay."

"We made a mistake I suppose then, sir? But we understood the young
woman didn't want to play particularly?" The tranter arranged his
countenance to signify that he did not want to be inquisitive in the
least.

"No, nor did she. Nor did I definitely wish her to just yet; for your
playing is very good. But, as I said, one of the churchwardens has been
so anxious for a change, that, as matters stand, I could