“It was last year, though I find that I didn’t put it down at the time, that at the concert in aid of the rebuilding of Pankford church I played Tartini’s ‘Il Trillo del Diavolo,’ to me one of the weirdest and most wonderful bits of violin music in the world. I know that I was almost crying when I finished it. But next day I saw in the report in the local paper, written by ‘Our Musical Man,’ that ‘Miss Fregelius then relieved the proceedings with a comic interlude on the violin, which was much appreciated by the audience.’ It was that, I confess it—yes, the idiotic remark of ‘Our Musical Man,’ which made me determine if it was in any way possible that I would shake the dust of this village off my feet. Then, so far as my father is concerned, the stipend is wretched and decreasing. Also he has never really got on here; he is too shy, too reserved, perhaps, in a way, too well read and educated, for these rough-and-ready people. Even his foreign name goes against him. The curates about here call him ‘Frigid Fregelius.’ It is the local idea of a joke. “So I persuaded him to advertise for an exchange, although he said it was a mere waste of money, as nobody in his senses would look at this parish. Then came the wonderful thing. After the very first advertisement—yes, the very first—arrived a letter from Mr. Tomley, rector of Monksland, where the stipend is £100 a year better than this, saying that he would wish to inquire into the matter. He has inquired, he has been, a pompous old gentleman with a slow voice and a single lock of white hair above his forehead; he says that it is satisfactory, and that, subject to the consent of the bishop, etc., he thinks that he will be glad to effect the exchange. Afterwards I found him in front of the house staring at the moorland behind, the sea in front, and the church in the middle, and looking very wretched. I asked him why he wanted to do it—the words popped out of my mouth, I couldn’t help them; it was all so odd. “Then I found out the reason. Mr. Tomley has a wife who is, or thinks she is—I am not sure which—an invalid, and who, I gather, speaks to Mr. Tomley with no uncertain sound. Mr. Tomley’s wife was the niece of a long-departed rector who was inducted in 1815, and reigned here for forty-five years. He was rich, a bachelor, and rebuilt the church. (Is it not all written in the fly-leaf of the last register?) Mrs. Tomley inherited her uncle’s landed property in this neighbourhood, and says that she is only well in the air of Northumberland. So Mr. Tomley has to come up here, which he doesn’t at all like, although I gather that he is glad to escape from his present squire, who seems to be a distinguished but arbitrary old gentleman, an ex-Colonel of the Guards; rather quarrelsome, too, with a habit of making fun of Mrs. Tomley. There’s the explanation.