might be getting a swelled head over this matter. The Rev. Augustus,
with pardonable pride, repeated some of the things that Mrs. Pennycoop
had said to him. Mrs. Pennycoop was not to imagine herself the only
person in Wychwood-on-the-Heath capable of generosity that cost
nothing. Other ladies could say graceful nothings--could say them
even better. Husbands dressed in their best clothes and carefully
rehearsed were brought in to grace the almost endless procession of
disconsolate parishioners hammering at the door of St. Jude's
parsonage. Between Thursday morning and Saturday night the Rev.
Augustus, much to his own astonishment, had been forced to the
conclusion that five-sixths of his parishioners had loved him from the
first without hitherto having had opportunity of expressing their real
feelings.

The eventful Sunday arrived. The Rev. Augustus Cracklethorpe had been
kept so busy listening to regrets at his departure, assurances of an
esteem hitherto disguised from him, explanations of seeming
discourtesies that had been intended as tokens of affectionate regard,
that no time had been left to him to think of other matters. Not till
he entered the vestry at five minutes to eleven did recollection of
his farewell sermon come to him. It haunted him throughout the
service. To deliver it after the revelations of the last three days
would be impossible. It was the sermon that Moses might have preached
to Pharaoh the Sunday prior to the exodus. To crush with it this
congregation of broken-hearted adorers sorrowing for his departure
would be inhuman. The Rev. Augustus tried to think of passages that
might be selected, altered. There were none. From beginning to end
it contained not a single sentence capable of being made to sound
pleasant by any ingenuity whatsoever.