Free The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge Page B

smile flashed out over his weatherbeaten face, like sunshine over snow. ‘Welcome, Madam,’ he said, giving her much the same greeting as Sir Benjamin had given her upon her arrival. ‘This countryside is honoured by your presence here.’ Then they looked at each other most attentively, and it was obvious to the onlookers that they had taken a great liking for each other. It was with reluctance that the Old Parson relinquished Miss Heliotrope’s hand, and took Sir Benjamin’s instead.
    ‘Squire,’ he bellowed in a sudden wrath, ‘on Wednesday last I found a rabbit caught in a trap in your park. I have told you before, and I tell you again, that if you permit traps to be set for God’s wild creatures on your landyou will spend your eternity caught in a trap yourself!’
    Sir Benjamin, whose face was red as a beetroot at the best of times and couldn’t go much redder, went a deep purple and loosened his stock. ‘It’s not my fault, Parson,’ he said. ‘Those black-hearted fellows from Merryweather Bay set traps on my land without my knowledge.’
    ‘I’ll put up with none of your excuses, Squire,’ boomed the old man. ‘You hold your park in trust from God, and every inch of it should be kept constantly beneath your eyes. You stand convicted, Squire, of gross laziness and neglect of duty. Take the necessary steps to see that the cruelty is not repeated.’
    Sir Benjamin did not say, as he very well might, that it was quite impossible to keep his eye upon every inch of a park the size of his. He didn’t say anything. He just rubbed his great beak of a nose with his forefinger and looked most terribly worried.
    Then it was Maria’s turn, and she found that she had been too optimistic in thinking that the Old Parson knew nothing as yet of her faults and failings. ‘Neatness of attire is to be commended in a woman,’ he told her, holding her hand in a grip of steel. ‘But not vanity. Vanity is of the devil. And excessive female curiosity is not to be commended either. Nip it in the bud, my dear, while there is time.’
    So he had seen her patting her pelisse and stroking her muff . . . So he had noticed her trying to see over the door of the pew . . . She did not hang her head, for that was not her way, but the eyes that she kept unwaveringly upon the Old Parson’s face filled with tears, and she blushed rose-pink from forehead to neck . . . Because she discovered suddenly that the approval of the Old Parson was something that she wanted terribly badly, and she appeared to have lost it already.
    But no. The anger went out of his voice, and that warm note of commendation took its place. ‘A true Merryweather,’ he said. ‘Come here whenever you like, child. This church is especially the home of the young.’
    Then once more he gave her the flashing smile that he had given her when he had looked down at her from his pulpit, and she curtsied, and then she and Sir Benjamin and Miss Heliotrope once more made a royal progress from the porch to the lych-gate, with Sir Benjamin stopping every minute to introduce her to first one and then another of the smiling villagers. ‘The little lady be a true Merryweather,’ they kept saying. And one old man whispered to her very low, so that only she heard what he said: ‘Be you the one, my dear?’ And an old woman whispered: ‘Keep a stout heart, dearie, for maybe ‘twill be you.’
    To these Maria could only reply with a smile, because she did not know what they were talking about.
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    Driving home again in the carriage, Maria asked Sir Benjamin what the Old Parson had meant by saying that the church was especially the home of the young.
    ‘He likes the children of the parish to use the church as a nursery,’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘He lets them play with the little statue of the Virgin, and the bell, and he tells them stories. I must tell you, Maria, that out in the world beyond our valley Old Parson is regarded as something of an oddity. He is scarcely