All that morning heavy pacings over her head convinced Mrs. Hubble that the minister was preparing a wonderful sermon. She generally guessed the temper of his discourse by the weight and width of the stumpings which preceded it. To-day she could hear him, as she expressed it, all over the room ... he was kicking the fire-irons ... he had overturned his chair ... he had flung up the window and banged it down again. Obviously something great was in process, and at the same time she felt that Mr. Sumption was rather mad. It was nothing short of indecent for him to preach to-night, after what had happened—and the queer way he had spoken about Jerry, too....

By this time the whole of Sunday Street knew about Jerry. He was discussed at breakfast-tables, in barns, on doorsteps, on milking-stools. No one was surprised; indeed, most people seemed to have foretold his bad end. “I said as he’d come to no good, that gipsy’s brat.”

“A valiant minister wot can’t breed up his own son.” “Howsumdever, I’m middling sorry fur the poor chap; I’ll never disremember how he saaved that cow of mine wot wur dying of garget.” “And I’m hemmed, maaster, if he wurn’t better wud my lambing ewes than my own looker, surelye.”

On the whole, the news improved his chances of a congregation. It was a better advertisement than the notice on the church door, or even than his veterinary achievement at Egypt Farm. Some “wanted to see how he took it,” others openly admired his pluck; all were stirred by curiosity and also by compassion. During the years he had lived among them he had grown dear to them and rather contemptible. They looked down on him for his shabbiness, his poverty, his pastoral blundering, his lack [289] of education; but they liked him for his willingness, his simplicity, his sturdy good looks, his strong muscles, his knowledge of cattle and horses.

All that morning people wavered up the street towards the Horselunges, and looked at it, and at the Bethel. Sometimes they gathered together in little groups, but always some way off. The Bethel stared blindly over the roof of the Horselunges, as if it ignored the misery huddled at its doors. No matter what might be the private sorrows of its servant, he must come to-night and preach within its walls those iron doctrines of Doomsday and Damnation in whose honour it had been built and had stood staring over the fields with the blind eyes of a corpse for a hundred years.

Towards noon Thyrza Beatup came up the street, walking briskly, with her weeds flapping behind her. It was the first time she had been out since her widowing, and people stared at her from their doors as she walked boldly up to Horselunges and knocked.

“How is poor Mus’ Sumption?” she asked Mrs. Hubble.

“Lamentaable, lamentaable,” said Mrs. Hubble, with eye and apron in conjunction.

“Well, please tell him as Mrs. Tom Beatup sends her kind remembrances and sympathy, and she reckons she knows wot he feels, feeling the saum herself.”

“Very good, Mrs. Beatup.”

“And you’ll be sure and give it all wot I said—about feeling the saum myself?”

“Oh, sartain.”

Thyrza walked off. Her face was very white and wooden. Mrs. Hubble stared after her.

[290]

“Middling pretty as golden-haired women look in them weeds.... Feels the saum as Mus’ Sumption, does she? That’s queer, seeing as Tom died lik Onward Christian Soldiers, and Jerry lik a dog. Howsumdever, I mun give her words ... maybe he’ll be fool enough to be............