After breakfast they all went out to the Volunteer field, which was to be cut first. Harry took charge of the reaper, with Zacky a scowling protestant at the horse’s head, while the others turned to the sickling and binding. Mr. Poullett-Smith had not arrived, having first to read Mattins and eat his breakfast, but he came about an hour after the start, a tall, bending, monkish figure, feeling just a little daring in his shirt-sleeves. The meeting of the two parsons was friendliest on the Anglican side. Mr. Poullett-Smith was a good example of the Church of England’s vocation “to provide a resident gentleman for every parish”—besides, he pitied Sumption. The fellow was so obviously misfitted by his pastorate—a fanatical, ignorant Calvinism, blown about by eschatological winds, was his whole equipment; otherwise, thought the curate, he had neither dignity, knowledge nor education. He would have been far happier had he been left a blacksmith, had his half-crazy visions been allowed to burn themselves out like his forge fires, instead of being stoked by mistaken patronage and inadequate theological training. As things stood, he was absurd, even in no worthier setting than a forgotten village Bethel—a mere caricature of a minister, even in the pulpit of the Particular Baptists, an old-fashioned and fanatical sect with their heads full of doomsday. But here among the reapers he was splendid. His open shirt displayed a neck strong and supple and plump as a boy’s—the grey homespun was stuck with sweat to his shoulders, and the huge muscles of his back showed under it in long ovoid lumps. His years had taken nothing from his strength, merely added to his solidness and endurance. With his shock of brindled curls, his comely brown skin, his teeth white as barley-kernels, and eyes bright and deep as a hammer pond, and all the splendour of his body from shoulder to heel, he was as fine a specimen of a man as he was a poor specimen of a minister. Mr. Poullett-Smith paid him the honour due to his body, while seeing no honour due to his soul. Mr. Sumption felt his physical superiority to the willowy, tallow-faced curate; indeed he had a double advantage over him, for he felt a spiritual towering too. He despised his doctrines of Universal Redemption and Sacramental Grace just as much as he despised his lean white arms and delicate features. He gave his hand a grip that made him wince—he could feel the bones cracking under the pressure.... “He keeps his hands white that he may hold the Lord’s body,” he thought to himself.