Toagis was in raptures. He hung about the church at all hours, unable to tear himself away from his adored pumpkin, and even bringing relays of friends in to admire it. From the expression of his face you would have thought that he was quoting Wordsworth on Westminster Bridge:

Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty!

Dorothy even had hopes, after this, of getting him to come to Holy Communion. But when the Rector saw the pumpkin he was seriously angry, and ordered “that revolting thing” to be removed at once. Mr. Toagis had instantly “gone chapel,” and he and his heirs were lost to the Church for ever.

Dorothy decided to make one final attempt at conversation.

“We’re getting on with the costumes for Charles the First,” she said. (The Church School children were rehearsing a play entitled Charles I in aid of the organ fund.) “But I do wish we’d chosen something a bit easier. The armour is a dreadful job to make, and I’m afraid the jackboots are going to be worse. I think next time we must really have a Roman or Greek play. Something where they only have to wear togas.”

This elicited only another muted grunt from the Rector. School plays, pageants, bazaars, jumble sales, and concerts in aid of were not quite so bad in his eyes as Harvest Festivals, but he did not pretend to be interested in them. They were necessary evils, he used to say. At this moment Ellen, the maidservant, pushed open the door and came gauchely into the room with one large, scaly hand holding her sacking apron against her belly. She was a tall, round-shouldered girl with mouse-coloured hair, a plaintive voice, and a bad complexion, and she suffered chronically from eczema. Her eyes flitted apprehensively towards the Rector, but she addressed herself to Dorothy, for she was too much afraid of the Rector to speak to him directly.

“Please, Miss—” she began.

“Yes, Ellen?”

“Please, Miss,” went on Ellen plaintively, “Mr. Porter’s in the kitchen, and he says, please could the Rector come round and baptize Mrs. Porter’s baby? Because they don’t think as it’s going to live the day out, and it ain’t been baptized yet, Miss.”

Dorothy stood up. “Sit down,” said the Rector promptly, with his mouth full.

“What do they think is the matter with the baby?” said Dorothy.

“Well, Miss, it’s turning quite black. And it’s had diarrhoea something cruel.”

The Rector emptied his mouth with an effort. “Must I have these disgusting details while I am eating my breakfast?” he exclaimed. He turned on Ellen: “Send Porter about his business and tell him I’ll be round at his house at twelve o’clock. I really cannot think why it is that the lower classes always seem to choose mealtimes to come pestering one,” he added, casting another irritated glance at Dorothy as she sat down.

Mr. Porter was a labouring man—a bricklayer, to be exact. The Rector’s views on baptism were entirely sound. If it had been urgently necessary he would have walked twenty miles through snow to baptize a dying baby. But he did not like to see Dorothy proposing to leave the breakfast table at the call of a common bricklayer.

There was no further conversation during breakfast. Dorothy’s heart was sinking lower and lower. The demand for money had got to be made, and yet it was perfectly obvious that it was foredoomed to failure. His breakfast finished, the Rector got up from the table and began to fill his pipe from the tobacco jar on the mantelpiece. Dorothy uttered a short prayer for courage, and then pinched herself.