hem that
did honour to the Church.

Here a retired wholesale clothier from the East-end of London--a short,
tubby gentleman who had recently taken the Manor House--was observed to
turn scarlet.

A gentleman hitherto unknown to them had signalled his advent among them
by an act of munificence that should prove a shining example to all rich
men. Mr. Horatio Copper--the reverend gentleman found some difficulty,
apparently, in deciphering the name.

"Cooper-Smith, sir, with an hyphen," came in a thin whisper, the voice
of the still scarlet-faced clothier.

Mr. Horatio Cooper-Smith, taking--the Rev. Augustus felt confident--a
not unworthy means of grappling to himself thus early the hearts of his
fellow-townsmen, had expressed his desire to pay for the expense of a
curate entirely out of his own pocket. Under these circumstances,
there would be no further talk of a farewell between the Rev. Augustus
Cracklethorpe and his parishioners. It would be the hope of the Rev.
Augustus Cracklethorpe to live and die the pastor of St. Jude's.

A more solemn-looking, sober congregation than the congregation that
emerged that Sunday morning from St. Jude's in Wychwood-on-the-Heath had
never, perhaps, passed out of a church door.

"He'll have more time upon his hands," said Mr. Biles, retired wholesale
ironmonger and junior churchwarden, to Mrs. Biles, turning the corner
of Acacia Avenue--"he'll have more time to make himself a curse and a
stumbling-block."

"And if this 'near relation' of his is anything like him--"

"Which you may depend upon it is the Case, or he'd never have thought of
him," was the opinion of Mr. Biles.

"I shall give that Mrs. Pennycoop," said Mrs. Biles, "a piece of my mind
when I meet her."

But of what use was that?

End of Project Gutenberg's The Cost of Kindness, by Jerome K. Jerome

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