PASSENGERS BY JOBY’S VAN.

At breakfast next morning he saw by his parents’ faces that something unusual had happened.  Nothing was said to him about it, whatever it might be.  But once or twice after this, coming into the parlour suddenly, he found his father and mother talking low and earnestly together; and now and then they would go up to his grandmother’s room and talk.

In some way he divined that there was a question of leaving home.  But the summer passed and these private talks became fewer.  Toward August, however, they began again; and by-and-by his mother told him.  They were going to a parish on the North Coast, right away across the Duchy, where his father had been presented to a living.  The place had an odd name—­Nannizabuloe.

“And it is lonely,” said Humility, “the most of it sea-sand, so far as I can hear.”

It was by the sea, then.  How would they get there?

“Oh, Joby’s van will take us most of the way.”

Of all the vans which came and went in the Fore Street, none could compare for romance with Joby’s.  People called it the Wreck Ashore; but its real name, “Vital Spark, J. Job, Proprietor,” was painted on its orange-coloured sides in letters of vivid blue, a blue not often seen except on ship’s boats.  It disappeared every Tuesday and Saturday over the hill and into a mysterious country, from which it emerged on Mondays and Fridays with a fine flavour of the sea renewed upon it and upon Joby.  No other driver wore a blue guernsey, or rings in his ears, as Joby did.  No other van had the same mode of progressing down the street in a series of short tacks, or brought such a crust of brine on its panes, or such a mixture of mud and fine sand on its wheels, or mingled scraps of dry sea-weed with the straw on its floor.

“Will there be ships?” Taffy asked.

“I dare say we shall see a few, out in the distance.  It’s a poor, outlandish place.  It hasn’t even a proper church.”

“If there’s no church, father can get into a boat and preach; just like the Sea of Galilee, you know.”

“Your father is too good a man to mimic the Scriptures in any such way.  There is a church, I believe, though it’s a tumble-down one.  Nobody has preached in it for years.  But Squire Moyle may do something now.  He’s a rich man.”

“Is that the old gentleman who came to ask father about his soul?”

“Yes; he says no preaching ever did him so much good as your father’s.  That’s why he came and offered the living.”

“But he can’t go to heaven if he’s rich.”

“I don’t know, Taffy, wherever you pick up such wicked thoughts.”

“Why, it’s in the Bible!”

Humility would not argue about it; but she told her husband that night what the child had said.  “My dear,” he answered, “the boy must think of these things.”

“But he ought not to be talking disrespectfully,” contended she.