"Have he said anything to you about a pension?" asked Voysey. "No, not yet. I thought he might be coming in about that to-night. My father afore me got a pension--a shilling a day for life--and I ought to have twice as much, in my opinion, though I don't expect it. And when I've got all I can, I'm going to shake the dust off my boots against the man and his church too. Never again, till I'm carried in to my grave, will I go across the threshold--not so long as he be there. I'm going to take up with the Dissenters, and I advise you to do the same." "That woman have told me about my pension," answered Joe--"Alice Masterman, I mean. I won't call her 'Miss' no more, for 'tis too respectful. She've worked on her brother--so she says--to give me three half-crowns a week. But I doubt she had anything to do with it--such a beastly stinge as her. However, that's the money; and who d'you think they've took on? That anointed fool the policeman's brother! He've been learning a lot of silliness down to a nurseryman at Plymouth, and he'm coming here, so bold as brass, and so noisy as a drum, to show what can be done with that garden. And if I don't look over the wall sometimes and have a laugh at him, 'tis pity!" Gollop nodded moodily, but he did not answer. Then Joe proceeded with malevolent glee. "I clear out on the last day of the year," he said; "and if I haven't picked the eyes out of his garden and got 'em settled in my patch afore that day----! She met me taking over a lot of mint plants a bit ago. 'Where be you taking they mint plants?' she said. 'To a neighbour,' I said. 'He wants 'em, and we can spare 'em.' 'You'll ask me, please, before you give things away, Voysey,' she said. And now I ax, humble as a maggot, if I may take this or that to a neighbour afore I move a leaf. And she always says, 'Yes, if we can spare it.' Had her there--eh?" "As for me," said Gollop, "I shall be the last regular right down parish clerk we ever have--unless the good old times come back later. A sexton he must use, since people have got to be buried, but who 'twill be I neither know nor care." "Mind you take the tools," said Joe. "They be fairly your property, and you can sell 'em again if you don't want 'em yourself. I've made a good few shillings that way during the last forty years. But as for leaving the church, I shouldn't do that, because of the Christmas boxes. 'Tis well knowed in Shaugh that your Christmas boxes run into a tidy figure, and some people go so far as to say that what you take at the door, when the bettermost come out after Christmas morning prayer, is pretty near so good as what be dropped in the bags for the offerings." "Lies," declared Thomas. "All envious lies. I never got near what the people thought. Still, I hadn't remembered. That's yet another thing where he'll have robbed me." When Miss Eliza Gollop appeared half an hour later, she was cold and dispirited.