A Thin Ghost and OthersJames, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
General
A Thin Ghost and Others
James, M. R. (Montague Rhodes)
Ghost stories, English; Horror tales, English; Short stories, English
Worby hastened to reassure him, "Not but what I could carry on about
that topic for hours at a time, and do do when I see my opportunity.
But Dean Burscough he was very set on the Gothic period, and nothing
would serve him but everything must be made agreeable to that. And one
morning after service he appointed for my father to meet him in the
choir, and he came back after he'd taken off his robes in the vestry,
and he'd got a roll of paper with him, and the verger that was then
brought in a table, and they begun spreading it out on the table with
prayer books to keep it down, and my father helped 'em, and he saw it
was a picture of the inside of a choir in a Cathedral; and the
Dean--he was a quick spoken gentleman--he says, 'Well, Worby, what do
you think of that?' 'Why', says my father, 'I don't think I 'ave the
pleasure of knowing that view. Would that be Hereford Cathedral, Mr.
Dean?' 'No, Worby,' says the Dean, 'that's Southminster Cathedral as
we hope to see it before many years.' 'In-deed, sir,' says my father,
and that was all he did say--leastways to the Dean--but he used to
tell me he felt really faint in himself when he looked round our
choir as I can remember it, all comfortable and furnished-like, and
then see this nasty little dry picter, as he called it, drawn out by
some London architect. Well, there I am again. But you'll see what I
mean if you look at this old view."
Worby reached down a framed print from the wall. "Well, the long and
the short of it was that the Dean he handed over to my father a copy
of an order of the Chapter that he was to clear out every bit of the
choir--make a clean sweep--ready for the new work that was being
designed up in town, and he was to put it in hand as soon as ever he
could get the breakers together. Now then, sir, if you look at that
view, you'll see where the pulpit used to stand: that's what I want
you to notice, if you please." It was, indeed, easily seen; an
unusually large structure of timber with a domed sounding-board,
standing at the east end of the stalls on the north side of the choir,
facing the bishop's throne. Worby proceeded to explain that during the
alterations, services were held in the nave, the members of the choir
being thereby disappointed of an anticipated holiday, and the organist
in particular incurring the suspicion of having wilfully damaged the
mechanism of the temporary organ that was hired at considerable
expense from London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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