“Hear, hear,” put in Dr Mant encouragingly.  Mrs Steele’s voice grew a little firmer.  “We thought, too, that the Vicarage might be the most convenient place on the whole.  It is a sharp walk up the hill for those of you who live in Polpier itself:  but our stables being empty, the farmers, who come from farther and just now at greater sacrifice, escape a jolting drive down into the village and back.”

“Hear, hear,” repeated Dr Mant.  He was thinking of the tyres of his car.  But this time he overdid it, and fetched up Mrs Polsue as by a galvanic shock.

“If interruptions are to be the order of the day,” said Mrs Polsue, “I’d like to enter my protest at once.  I don’t hold, for my part, with calling public meetings—­for I suppose this is a public meeting?” she asked, breaking off, with a challenging eye on the Vicar.

“By no means,” he answered with quick good-humour.  “It’s a meeting by invitation, though—­as my wife was about to explain—­the invitations were meant to include friends of all creeds and parties.”

“It’s for a public purpose, anyhow?”

“Certainly.”

“Then I may be saying what doesn’t meet with your approval, or Mrs Steele’s, or the company’s:  but that’s just my point.  I don’t hold with meetings for public business being called in a private house.  Because if things are done that you don’t approve of, either you sit mum-chance out o’ politeness, or else you speak your mind and offend your host and hostess.”

Mr Hambly was about to interpose, but the Vicar checked him with a quick movement of his hand.

“Mrs Polsue’s is a real point; and, if she will allow me to say so, she has put it very well.  Indeed, I was going to propose, later on, that we hold our future meetings in a place to be agreed on.  This is just a preliminary talk; and when a dozen people meet to discuss, it’s handier as a rule to have some one in the chair. . . .  You agree? . . .  Then for form’s sake, I propose that we elect a chairman.”

“And I propose Mrs Steele,” added Mr Hambly.

“Seconded,” said Farmer Best.  “Damn it!”

“William!” his spouse ejaculated. (She knew that he detested Mrs Polsue, whom he had once described in private as “the p’isenest ’ooman that ever licked verdigris off a farthing.”)

“’Tis all right, Chrisjana,” he responded in a muffled voice, with head abased as nearly between his calves as a protuberant stomach allowed.  “But one o’ the castors o’ this here chair has given way. . . .  Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am,”—­he raised a face half-apoplectic but cheerful, and turned it upon his hostess—­“but I totalled up seventeen score when last weighed.  There’s no damage done that can’t be set right with a screw-driver afore I go.”  Then, with another turn-about that embraced the company, “Proposed an’ seconded that Mrs Steele do take the chair.  Those in favour say ’Hi!’—­the contrary ‘No.’ . . .  The Hi’s ’ave it.” (Farmer Best was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Guardians, and knew how to conduct public business.)