"Don't think it, Tommy," said Nathan Baskerville. "I've had a good tell with him and find him a very civil-spoken and well-meaning man. No fool, neither. You mustn't expect him to leave everything just as Mr. Valletort left it. You must allow for the difference between eighty-two and twenty-eight, which is Mr. Masterman's age; but, believe me, he's calm and sensible and very anxious to please. He's pleased me by praising my beer, like one who knew; and he's pleased my brother Vivian by praising his riding-cob, like one who knew; and he'll please Joe Voysey presently by praising the vicarage garden; and he'll please you, Thomas, by praising your churchyard." "If he's going to be all things to all men, he'll please none," said Tommy. "We've got no need of one of them easy ministers. Him and me must keep the whip-hand of Shaugh, same as me and the Reverend Valletort used to do. However, the man will hear my views, and my sister's also; because a clear understanding from the start be going to save a world of worry after." "Not married," said Mr. Voysey. "But he've a sister. I hope she ban't one of they gardening sort, so-called, that's always messing round making work and finding things blowed down here or eaten with varmints there. If she's a flower-liking female, 'twill be my place to tell her straight out from the shoulder that flowers won't grow in the vicarage garden, and that she must be content with the 'dendrums in summer time and the foxgloves and such-like homely old stuff." "He was a football player to college and very skilled at it, so Barker told me," said Ned Baskerville. "Then mark me, he'll be for making a club, and teaching the young chaps to play of a Saturday and keeping 'em out of your bar, Mr. Baskerville," declared the parish clerk; "Yes, look at it as you will, there's changes in the air, and I hope we'll all stand shoulder to shoulder against 'em, and down the man afore he gets his foot in the stirrup." "You two--Joe Voysey and you--be enough to frighten the poor soul out of his seven senses afore he's been in the place a week," declared Ned Baskerville. "And I hope for one that Uncle Nat won't go against him; and I know father won't, for he's said this many a day that old Valletort was past his work and ought to be pensioned off." "Your father's not a man for unseemly changes, all the same," declared Tommy; "and if this new young minister was to go in the pulpit in white instead of black, for instance, as the Popish habit is, Vivian Baskerville would be the first to rise up and tell him to dress himself decently and in order." But Ned denied this. "Don't you think you know my father, Tommy, because you don't. If this chap gets up a football club, he'll have father on his side from the first; and he can preach in black or white or pea-green, so long as he talks sense through his mouth, and not nonsense through his nose, like the old one did."