Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/867

 Rh privately one evening in the church, she dressed as a boy.

In Jamaica Wolcot found that there was but little opportunity for him to earn much by his profession, and Sir William proposed to him to take Holy Orders, so that he might appoint him to the rich benefice of S. Anne in the island. Wolcot, without the smallest vocation for Orders, looking only to the monetary value of the living, practically a sinecure, returned home in 1769 and was ordained deacon 24 June in that year, and priest on the following day, by the Bishop of London. Thus equipped he returned to Jamaica in March, 1770, hoping to find the incumbent of S. Anne's dead—he had left when the man was ailing. But to his vast disgust the rector of S. Anne's had taken on a new spell of life, and did not at all see his way to vacate the fat benefice to oblige Wolcot. John Wolcot was now given the incumbency of Vere, but lived most of his time in the Governor's house, leaving a hired deputy to perform the duties of his cure.

Finding that there was little prospect of getting S. Anne's he threw aside his Orders, reverted to his profession, and was appointed Physician-General to the troops on the island 21 May, 1770. He lived on terms of close friendship with the Trelawny family, where his broad humour, his sarcastic sallies, and his witty stories made him a delightful companion at the table over the wine.

"I was invited," said he, "to sup with a rich planter and his wife. During the repast, my friend desired a female slave in waiting to mix some toddy, on which the black girl, in her peculiar way, asked him if it was ’to be drinkey for dry, or drinkey for drunkey.' When our supper was ended, and our water being exhausted, the planter sent his wife a short distance