Ultimately, as I have said, however, thanks to repeated protests and an impassioned interview with the vicar, my father had definitely secured for himself the right of precedence, though the Carkeeks still remained sidesmen. Nor was that all. For it was now generally known that the vicar’s churchwarden was about to retire, and there could be little doubt, as my father had several times observed to me, as to the probable successor to this great position. It was with a comparatively light heart therefore that I opened the front door, hung up my hat and coat and folded my scarf, and entered the parlour ready to describe to my father the events that had occupied my evening; and my distress can be imagined when I at once perceived him to be in a state of the acutest physical congestion. Facially suffused to an alarming extent, the hairs of his moustache were visibly projecting, and I naturally assumed at first that he must have become the subject of an exceptional degree of intestinal discomfort. On closer inspection, however, I observed that this could scarcely be the case since his waistcoat buttons were still fastened, and for a brief second I had a fearful apprehension that he was annoyed with myself. He did in fact ask me rather abruptly the reason for my absence from the evening meal. But his expression lightened a little when I told him where I had been and of the services rendered by me to Ezekiel Stool. “Yes, it’s a good family,” he said, “a very good family, and there’s money in it as well as religion.” The next moment, however, his face had resumed its congestion, and as I leaned back while my mother unlaced my boots, it became increasingly evident to me that I was in the presence of a spiritual crisis of the gravest kind. Nay, even then, I remember, I had a sudden presentiment that here was a situation of no common significance, and I signalled to my mother to be as rapid as possible in bringing me my slippers and leaving us alone. Then I took a deep breath and, leaning forward a little, gently touched my father’s knee. “Can I not help you?” I said. My father stared at me. For perhaps a minute his lips moved convulsively. Then in a strangled voice he uttered a single word, followed a little later by fourteen other words. “Carkeek,” he said. “It’s that fellow Carkeek. He’s been and presented the church with a lectern.” For a moment I was utterly dumbfounded. “A lectern?” I asked. My father nodded. “Made of brass,” he said, “in the image of a bird.” “Of a bird?” I cried. “What sort of bird?” “Of an eagle,” said my father, “looking towards the left.” “Towards the left?” I said. “But where’s it to stand?” “At the top of the aisle,” said my father, “just below the chancel steps.”