The good lady was too much taken aback even to offer her customary welcome, and as for the gamekeeper, he sat stock still in his chair, with his eyes on his son, like a hound that waits the signal for action.
"We are rather an invasion, I'm afraid," said the curate, squeezing himself into the little kitchen between a clothes-horse and a dresser.
"Not at all," said George, looking very bewildered.
"Perhaps you'll wonder why we've come ?" added the curate, turning to the gamekeeper.
"Maybe you've missed something, and thinks one of us has got it," was the cheerful suggestion.
The curate laughed, and the deputation laughed, and George laughed, and George's mother laughed, which made things much easier for all parties.
"No, we haven't missed anything, Mr Reader," replied the curate, "but we expect to miss _somebody_--George, and that is the reason of our visit." And then the curate explained what the business was, and one of the churchwardens made a speech (the composition of which had kept him awake all the previous night), and then I was produced and handed over.

And George blushed and stammered out something which nobody could understand, and George's mother began to cry, and George's father, unable otherwise to express his sense of the occasion, began to whistle.
And so the little business was satisfactorily concluded, and the deputation withdrew, leaving me in the pocket of a new master.

Three days afterwards both of us took our departure for Cambridge..