TWO:"Then he ?un't fit to work on my land. I ?un't a charity house. I can't afford to kip a man wud no backbone and no wits. I've bin too kind as it isI shud have got shut of him afore he burnt my pl?ace to cinders."The funeral was dignified and impressive, and every now and then Reuben glanced across at his son with eyes that said"Wot could Ebenezer have done compared wud this?" All the same, he was disappointed. Somehow he had expected his churchmanship to strike the rector and the curate very favourably; he had expected them metaphorically to fall on his neck; he saw himself as a champion of established Christendom, of tithes and glebes and cosy rectories and "dearly beloved brethren" on Sundays. It was humiliating to find himself ignored, indeed treated as an outsider, simply because he had not been to church for ten years. He had had his children baptised into the Establishment, and now he was burying his son according to its rites, in spite of opposition, even persecution. These parsons were ungrateful, bigoted, and blind.
