A Tale of a Lonely Parish | Page 5

the
game to last as long as possible, and endeavoured to prevent the cat's
escape by always hitting the wire netting at the precise spot where she
was trying to get over it. In this way he would often succeed in getting
as much as half an hour's respite from Horace. At last the vicar, panting
with his exertions and bathed in perspiration, would protest against the
form of assault.
"Really, Angleside", he would say, "I believe I could throw straighter
myself. I'm quite sure Carlo can get her out if you leave him alone".
Whereupon Cornelius would put his hands in his pockets and look on,
and in a few minutes, when the cat had been driven out and the vicar's
back was turned, he would slip a sixpence into old Reynold's hand, and
follow his tutor reluctantly back to the study. Whether there was any
connection between the cat and the sixpence is uncertain, but during the
last months of Angleside's stay at the vicarage the ingenuity of Simon
Gunn's yellow cat in getting over the wire netting reached such a pitch

that the vicar began to prepare a letter to the Bishop Stortford
Chronicle on the relations generally existing between cats and
asparagus beds.
Another event in the life of the vicarage was the periodical lameness of
the vicar's strawberry mare, followed by the invariable discovery that
George Horsnell the village blacksmith had run a nail into her foot
when he shoed her last. Invariably, also, the vicar threatened that in
future the mare should be shod by Hawkins the rival blacksmith, who
was a dissenter and had consequently never been employed by the
vicarage. Moreover it was generally rumoured once every year that old
Nat Barker, the octogenarian cripple who had not been able to stand
upon his feet for twenty years, was at the point of death. He invariably
recovered, however, in time to put in an appearance by proxy at the
distribution of a certain dole of a loaf and a shilling on boxing day. It
was told also that in remote times the Puckeridge hounds had once
come that way and that the fox had got into the churchyard. A
repetition of this stirring event was anxiously looked for during many
years, every time that the said pack met within ten miles of
Billingsfield, but hitherto it had been looked for in vain. On the whole
the life at the vicarage was not eventful, and the studies of the two
young men who imbibed learning at the feet of the Reverend Augustin
Ambrose were rarely interrupted.
Mrs. Ambrose herself represented the feminine element in the society
of the little place. The new doctor was a strange man, suspected of
being a free-thinker, and he was not married. The Hall, for there was a
Hall at Billingsfield, was uninhabited, and had been uninhabited for
years. The estate which belonged to it was unimportant and moreover
was in Chancery and seemed likely to stay there, for reasons no one
ever mentioned at Billingsfield, because no one knew anything about
them. From time to time a legal looking personage drove up to the
Duke's Head, which was kept by Mr. Abraham Boosey, who was also
undertaker to the parish, and which was thought to be a very good inn.
The legal personage stayed a day or two, spending most of his time at
the Hall and in driving about to the scattered farms which represented
the estate, but he never came to the vicarage, nor did the vicar ever

seem to know what he was doing nor why he came. "He came on
business"--that was all that anybody knew. His business was to collect
rents, of course; but what he did with them, no one was bold enough to
surmise. The estate was in Chancery, it was said, and the definition
conveyed about as much to the mind of the average inhabitant of
Billingsfield, as if he had been informed that the moon was in perigee
or the sun in Scorpio. The practical result of its being in Chancery was
that no one lived there.
John Short liked Mrs. Ambrose and the Honourable Cornelius behaved
to her with well bred affability. She always said Cornelius had very
nice manners, as indeed he had and had need to have. Occasionally,
perhaps four or five times in the year, the Reverend Edward Pewlay,
who had what he called a tenor voice, and his wife, who played the
pianoforte very fairly, came over to assist at a Penny Reading. He lived
"over Harlow way," as the natives expressed it; he was what was called
in those parts a rabid Anglican, because he preached in his surplice and
had services on the Saints' days, and the vicar of Billingsfield did not
sympathise