Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/113

Awful Reason of the Vicar's Visit "I have never heard of it," I said, "as among the duties of a clergyman. But I am not well up in church matters. Excuse me if perhaps I failed to follow you correctly. Dressed up—as what?"

"As an old woman," said the vicar, solemnly—"as an old woman."

I thought in my heart that it required no great transformation to make an old woman of him, but the thing was evidently more tragic than comic, and I said, respectfully:

"May I ask how it occurred?"

"I will begin at the beginning," said Mr. Shorter, "and I will tell my story with the utmost possible precision. At seventeen minutes past eleven this morning I left the vicarage to keep certain appointments and pay certain visits in the village. My first visit was to Mr. Jervis, the treasurer of our League of Christian Amusements, with whom I concluded some business touching the claim made by Parkes, the gardener, in the matter of the rolling of our tennis lawn. I then visited Mrs. Arnett, a very earnest church-woman, but permanently bedridden. She 97