"I wish I was dead!" she announced.



CHAPTER II.


John Romley was the cause of her exile. This young man had been a
pupil of the Rector's, and studied divinity with him for a while
before matriculating at Lincoln College, Oxford; where in due course
he took his degree, and whence he returned, in deacon's orders, to
take charge of the endowed school at Epworth and to help in the
spiritual work of the parish. Mr. Wesley's experience of curates had
been far from happy, but Romley promised to be the bright exception
in a long list of failures. (It was he who discovered and introduced
Johnny Whitelamb to the household.) He was sociable; had pleasant
manners, a rotund figure not yet inclining to coarseness, a pink and
white complexion, and a mellifluous tenor voice. To his voice, alas!
he owed most of his misfortunes in life.

The Rector had no high opinion of his brains: but tolerated him, and
at first looked on leniently enough when he began to pay his
addresses to Patty. Indeed the courtship proceeded to the gentle
envy of her sisters until one fatal night when Romley, in the rectory
parlour at Wroote, attuned his voice to sing the _Vicar of Bray_.
In his study Mr. Wesley heard it. He, of all men, was no Vicar of
Bray, albeit he had abjured Dissent: but he felt his cloth insulted,
and by this fribble of his own order. It was treason in short, and
he bounced into the parlour as Mr. Romley carolled: