Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym

Miss Morrow, pleased with the idea. But really a frightened rabbit was nearer the mark. Mr. Latimer had been quite ridiculously furtive with her lately; indeed, ever since the night of the walk on Shotover, now that she came to think of it, and that was months ago. Sometimes she had found it hard not to laugh out loud at him and explain the whole thing to Miss Doggett. It was a wonder she hadn’t guessed that there was some secret between them, for nowadays Mr. Latimer never addressed a remark to her directly and always followed Miss Doggett out of the room if there was any chance that he would be left alone with Miss Morrow. But of course it would never have occurred to Miss Doggett to suspect anything. He was a clergyman, a finely tuned instrument, whereas Miss Morrow, if she was anything, was a harp with broken strings, an old twanging thing that somebody might play in the street. What could Mr. Latimer have to say to a person like Miss Morrow? She turned her head away, smiling at her thoughts.
    It was pleasant sitting in the Parks in the sunshine, which was as warm as June, although it was only the beginning of March. But Miss Doggett had not yet been tempted to put on what she called ‘flimsy clothes’ and still wore her skunk cape, gaiters and fur-lined gloves.
    ‘I thought Mr. Latimer’s sermon last week was very fine,’ she said, still on the same subject. ‘He is a really gifted preacher, such a command of language. And those quotations were really quite obscure. Anyone can see that he is a very well-read man.’
    No doubt he would appear so to one who read nothing but Tennyson, thought Miss Morrow, but it was not really so difficult to find quotations unknown to the average elderly female churchgoer to adorn a sermon. There were many excellent anthologies. Mr. Latimer had several on his shelves, and Miss Morrow had seen him skimming through a Wordsworth one evening, where, as most people surely knew, one could prick an appropriate line about Man or Nature or both with a pin.
    ‘It was clever to suit it to the time of year,’ went on Miss Doggett. 
‘ “
Behold, I make all things new”, and how we see that borne out in Nature and in the new ideas which we often get at this time of year.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ said Miss Morrow, thinking of Miss Doggett’s new idea, which had been to move the silver-table in the drawing-room to the other side of the room.
    ‘But I was glad to see that he remembered the need for moderation,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘New ideas are not necessarily better than old ones.’ She paused, as if thinking of the silver-table, for the moving of it had cost her much anxious thought. ‘It is unusual to find a young man who realises this. Mr. Latimer knows as well as anybody that we can sometimes be too rash, and that we should ask for God’s guidance at such times.’
    ‘One always thinks of clergymen as realising things like that more strongly than other people,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘I suppose we are apt to attribute to them all the virtues they preach.’
    ‘Yes, clergymen are better than other men,’ said Miss Doggett, agreeing with her companion for once. ‘They are chosen, you see, set apart. That is why there are not very many of them.’
    ‘Oh.’ This seemed rather a curious idea to Miss Morrow. She imagined God selecting half a dozen and saying, ‘Well, that’s enough for North Oxford. We don’t need any more.’
    Miss Doggett had now gone on to speak of secular things, although this particular topic of conversation was no less holy to her than sacred things themselves. Anthea and Simon had been up to London together last week, and she was saying how splendid it was that Anthea should have made such a good impression on Lady Beddoes.
    ‘I believe she is very easy to get on with,’ said Miss Morrow.
    ‘Well, she has that graciousness of manner that one would expect,’ said Miss Doggett, who did not somehow like the idea of her companion’s finding