Free The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

and out at 5, wrong and into the hunt (4 times repeated).
    The last call in each half is a single; Holt’s Single must be used in ringing this peal.

THE FIRST PART
    MR. GOTOBED IS CALLED WRONG WITH A DOUBLE
    Thou shalt pronounce this hideous thing
With cross, and candle, and bell-knelling.
    JOHN MYRC: Instructions for Parish Priests (15th century).
     
    Spring and Easter came late together that year to Fenchurch St. Paul. In its own limited, austere and almost grudging fashion the Fen acknowledged the return of the sun. The floods withdrew from the pastures; the wheat lifted its pale green spears more sturdily from the black soil; the stiff thorns bordering dyke and grass verge budded to a softer outline; on the willows, the yellow catkins danced like little bell-rope sallies, and the silvery pussies plumped themselves for the children to carry to church on Palm Sunday; wherever the grim banks were hedge-sheltered, the shivering dog-violets huddled from the wind.
    In the Rectory garden, the daffodils were (in every sense of the word) in full blow, for in the everlasting sweep and torment of wind that sweeps across East Anglia, they tossed desperately and madly. “My poor daffodils!” Mrs. Venables would exclaim, as the long leaf-tufts streamed over like blown water, and the golden trumpets kissed the ground, “this dreadful old wind! I don’t know how they stand it!” She felt both pride and remorse as she cut them—sound stock varieties, Emperor, Empress, Golden Spur—and took them away to fill the altar-vases and the two long, narrow, green-painted tin troughs that on Easter Sunday stood one on either side of the chancel screen. “The yellow looks so bright,” thought Mrs. Venables, as she tried to persuade the blossoms to stand upright among the glossy green of periwinkle and St. John’s Wort, “though it really seems a shame to sacrifice them.”
    She knelt before the screen on a long red cushion, borrowed from a pew-seat to protect her “bones” from the chill of the stone floor. The four brass altar-vases stood close beside her, in company with a trug full of flowers and a watering-can. Had she tried to fill them at the Rectory and carry them over, the sou’-wester would have blown them into ruin before she had so much as crossed the road. “Tiresome things!” muttered Mrs. Venables, as the daffodils flopped sideways, or slid down helplessly out of sight into the bottom of the trough. She sat up on her heels and reviewed her work, and then turned, hearing a step behind her.
    A red-haired girl of fifteen, dressed in black, had come in, bearing a large sheaf of pheasant-eye narcissi. She was tall and thin and rather gawky, though with promise of becoming some day a striking-looking woman.
    “Are these any use to you, Mrs. Venables? Johnson’s trying to get the arums along, but the wind’s so terrific, he’s afraid they’ll be broken all to bits in the barrow. I think he’ll have to pack them into the car, and drive them down in state.”
    “My dear Hilary, how kind of you! Yes, indeed—I can do with all the white flowers I can get. These are beautiful, and what a delicious scent! Dear things! I thought of having some of our plants stood along there in front of Abbot Thomas, with some tall vases among them. And the same on the other side under old Gaudy. But I am not ”—here she became very much determined—“I am not going to tie bunches of greenery on to the font and the pulpit this year. They can have that at Christmas and Harvest Festival, if they like, but at Easter it’s unsuitable and absurd, and now that old Miss Mallow’s gone, poor dear, there’s no need to go on with it.”
    “I hate Harvest Festivals. It’s a shame to hide up all this lovely carving with spiky bits of corn and vegetable marrows and things.”
    “So it is, but the village people like it, you know. Harvest Festival is their festival, Theodore always says. I suppose it’s wrong that it should mean so much more