Page:A Child of the Jago - Arthur Morrison.djvu/225

 cleared out in order to make room for his new church, in common fairness he should find them similar lodgings on the same terms. So they sat and waited for him to do it.

At length the vicar set to work with them in good earnest, carried away with him a family or two at a time, and inducted them to rooms of his own finding. And hereat others, learning that in these cases, rent in advance was exacted, bestirred themselves: reflecting that if rent must be paid, they might as well choose their own rooms as take those that Father Sturt might find. Of course the thing was not done without payments from the vicar's pocket. Some were wholly destitute; others could not muster enough to pay that advance of rent which alone could open a Jago tenancy. Distinguishing the genuine impecuniosity from the merely professed, with the insight that was now a sixth sense with him, Father Sturt helped sparingly and in