Among the performers at the Malvern concerts some professionals had been engaged from London, including Miss Margaret Wild, a well-known pianist.  I had given my men a holiday for the occasion and was anxious to hear their opinion of the performances.  They considered the music rather too high class for them, but they thoroughly appreciated the nimble fingers of Miss Margaret Wild; one of them adding enthusiastically:  “My word, her did make ’im (the piano) rottle!” Our old parish clerk too, at the time over eighty years of age, who walked three miles to Evesham Station in the morning, ascended the Worcestershire Beacon—­nearly 1,500 feet—­and finally walked back from Evesham to Badsey at night, was much struck by the recitations of Miss Isabel Bateman at the concert.  The dear old man was somewhat deaf, and told me that, sitting towards the back of the room, “I couldn’t hear nothing, but I could see as the gesters [gestures] was all right.”

This old clerk was prominently devout in the church responses, and had some original pronunciations of unusual words; in the Nicene Creed he generally followed a few bars, so to speak, behind the Vicar, but one never failed to catch the words “apost’lick church” towards the end.  He was very scornful of ghosts, and told me that he had been about the churchyard very often at night for fifty years without seeing anything like an apparition.  But the whole village was alarmed, including the clerk, one Sunday when, about midnight, the tenor bell was heard solemnly tolling.  The clerk, with some supporters and a lantern, unlocked the door, and found the village idiot—­silly C.—­in the tower ringing the bell.  It appeared that, after service, the clerk had extinguished the lights and locked up for the night about eight o’clock.  C., who had gone to sleep in the gallery with his head upon his arms before him on the desk, slumbered on until he woke in alarm some four hours later, to find himself alone and the church in total darkness, but he was intelligent enough to remember the bell and get his release.

C. had a hand-to-hand fight in the church tower with Aldington’s special imbecile.  After service the clerk invited me to the scene of the battle, pointing out some crimson traces on the stone pavement.  I called upon our imbecile’s parents on my way home, and the old father was greatly shocked.  “Here he be, sir,” he said; “I hope you’ll give him a jolly good hiding.”  I told him I could hardly undertake the role of executioner on a Sunday, in cold blood, and contented myself with a severe reprimand.

I was handing the collecting-bag one morning after service, and finding it did not return from the end of the row of chairs as quickly as usual, I discovered this same individual with his hand in the bag.  I signed to him impatiently to pass it back.  After service he came to the vestry and said that he had contributed a florin in mistake for a penny, and was trying to retrieve it.  I could generally estimate pretty accurately the amount of the collection, as I handed the bag, knowing the extent of each person’s usual gift, and sure enough, there was an extra florin among the coins, with which I sent him away happy.