Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 107: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

to a suggestion from Mr. Worby that they should finish the evening in his own parlour. We fiud them accordingly settled there some short time afterwards. Mr. Worby made his story a long one, and I will not undertake to tell it wholly in his own words, or in his own order. Lake committed the substance of it to paper immediately after hearing it. together with some few passages of the narrative which had fixed themselves verbatim in his mind; I shall probably find it expedient to coudense Lake’s record to some extent. Mr. Worby was born, it appeared, about the year 1828. [is father before him had been connected with the Cathedral, and likewise lis grandfather. One or both had been choristers, and in later life both had done work as mason and carpenter respectively about the fabric. Worby himself, though eosdesseil as he frankly acknowledged, of an indiflerent voice, had been drafted into the choir at about ten years of age. It was in 1840 that the wave of the Gothic revival smote the Cathedral of Southminster. “There was a lot of lovely stuff went then, sir,” said Worby, with a sigh. “My father couldn't hardly believe it when he got his orders to clear out the choir. There was a new dean just come in-—Dean Burscough it was —and my father had been ‘prenticed to a good firm of joiners in the city, and knew what good work was when he saw it. Crool it was, he used to say: all that beauti- ful wainscot oak, as good as the day it was put up, and garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and lovely old gilding work on the coats of arms and the organ pipes. All went to the timber yard—every bit except some little pieces worked up in the Lady Chapel, and ’ere in this overmantel. Well T may be mistook, but say our choir never looked as well since. Still there was a lot found out about the history of the church, and vo doubt but what it did stand in need of repair. There was very few winters passed but what we'd lose a pinnacle.” Mr, Lake expressed his concurrence with Worby’s views of restoration, but owns to a fear about this point lest the story proper should never be reached. Possibly this was perceptible in bis manner, Worby hastened to reassure hin, “Not but what 1 could carry on about that tepic for hours at a time, and do do when J see my oppor- tunity. Bul Doan Burscough he was very set on the Gothic period, and nothing would seeve him but everything must be made agreeable to that. And one morning, aller service he appointed for my father to meet him in the choir, and he came back after he'd taken off his robes in the vestry, and he'd gota roll of paper with him, and the verger that was then brought ina table, and they begun spreading it out on the table with prayer books to keep it down, and my father hel ed "em, and he saw it was a picture of the inside of a choir in a Cathedral; and the Dean —he was a quick-spoken gentleman-—he says, Well, Worby. 105 comichbooks.com