“Oh;—that’s part of the fun. You found one fox dead and you didn’t kill another because you didn’t try. Well; Mr. Morton, I don’t think I shall take to fox hunting even though they should introduce it in Mickewa. What’s become of the rest of the men?”
“Most of them are in the brook,” said Ned Botsey as he rode on towards Dillsborough.
Mr. Runciman was also there and trotted on homewards with Botsey, Larry, and Kate Masters. “I think I’ve won my bet,” said the hotelkeeper.
“I don’t see that at all. We didn’t find in Dillsborough Wood.”
“I say we did find in Dillsborough Wood. We found a fox though unfortunately the poor brute was dead.”
“The bet’s off I should say. What do you say, Larry?”
Then Runciman argued his case at great length and with much ability. It had been intended that the bet should be governed by the fact whether Dillsborough Wood did or did not contain a fox on that morning. He himself had backed the wood, and Botsey had been strong in his opinion against the wood. Which of them had been practically right? Had not the presence of the poisoned fox shown that he was right? “I think you ought to pay,” said Larry.
“All right,” said Botsey riding on, and telling himself that that was what came from making a bet with a man who was not a gentleman.
“He’s as unhappy about that hat,” said Runciman, “as though beer had gone down a penny a gallon.”
XII
Arabella Trefoil
On the Sunday the party from Bragton went to the parish church—and found it very cold. The duty was done by a young curate who lived in Dillsborough, there being no house in Bragton for him. The rector himself had not been in the church for the last six months, being an invalid. At present he and his wife were away in London, but the vicarage was kept up for his use. The service was certainly not alluring. It was a very wet morning and the curate had ridden over from Dillsborough on a little pony which the rector kept for him in addition to the £100 per annum paid for his services. That he should have got over his service quickly was not a matter of surprise—nor was it wonderful that there should have been no soul-stirring matter in his discourse as he had two sermons to preach every week and to perform single-handed all the other clerical duties of a parish lying four miles distant from his lodgings. Perhaps had he expected the presence of so distinguished a critic as the Senator from Mickewa he might have done better. As it was, being nearly wet through and muddy up to his knees, he did not do the work very well. When Morton and his friends left the church and got into the carriage for their half-mile drive home across the park, Mrs. Morton was the first to speak. “John,” she said, “that church is enough to give any woman her death. I won’t go there any more.”
“They don’t understand warming a church in the country,” said John apologetically.
“Is it not a little too large for the congregation?” asked the Senator.
The church was large and straggling and ill arranged, and on this particular Sunday had been almost empty. There was in it an harmonium which Mrs. Puttock played when she was at home, but in her absence the attempt made by a few rustics to sing the hymns had not been a musical success. The whole affair had been very sad, and so the Paragon had felt it who knew—and was remembering through the whole service—how these things are done in transatlantic cities.
“The weather kept the people away I suppose,” said Morton.
“Does that gentleman generally draw large congregations?” asked the persistent Senator.
“We don’t go in for drawing congregations here.” Under the cross-examination of his guest the Secretary of Legation almost lost his diplomatic good temper. “We have a church in every parish for those who choose to attend it.”
“And very few do choose,” said the Senator. “I can’t say that they’re wrong.” There seemed at the moment to be no necessity to carry the disagreeable conversation any further as they had now reached the house. Mrs. Morton immediately went upstairs, and the two gentlemen took themselves to the fire in the so-called library, which room was being used as more commodious than the big drawing-room. Mr. Gotobed placed himself on the rug with his back to the fire and immediately reverted to the Church. “That gentleman is paid by tithes I suppose.”
“He’s not the rector. He’s a curate.”
“Ah;—just so. He looked like a curate. Doesn’t the rector do anything?” Then Morton, who was by this time heartily sick of explaining, explained the unfortunate state of Mr. Puttock’s health, and the conversation was carried on till gradually the Senator learned that Mr. Puttock received £800 a year and a house for doing nothing, and that he paid his deputy £100 a year with the use of a pony. “And how long will that be allowed to go on, Mr. Morton?” asked the Senator.
To all these inquiries Morton found himself compelled not only to answer, but to answer the truth. Any prevarication or attempt at mystification fell to the ground at once under the Senator’s tremendous powers of inquiry. It had been going on for four years, and would probably go on now till Mr. Puttock died. “A man of his age with the asthma may live for twenty years,” said the Senator who had already learned that Mr. Puttock was only fifty. Then he ascertained that Mr. Puttock had not been presented to, or selected for the living on account of any peculiar fitness;—but that he had been a fellow of Rufford at Oxford till he was forty-five, when he had thought it well to marry and take a living. “But he must have been asthmatic
