But on this occasion Jimmy's words commanded attention.
"Look yew there sir!" he exclaimed in a hollow tone, grasping the vicar's arm, and pointing with a gnarled old finger that shook partly from age and partly from excitement--"look you there, sir! There go Mosus to strike th' rock. 'Must we find you water?' he say; and yer know what happened tew 'um, yer know, and so dew he--well!" and Jimmy threw out both hands with a gesture that implied that he, at least, would have no traffic with such evil doings.
Mr. Wilman and his following had just come over the common, and were bearing down again on the village, and the vicar was all eagerness to join them. It was tiresome of Jimmy to detain him just now, and Jimmy was as difficult to shake off as a terrier with a rat.
"You'll be thankful enough to drink the clear water when we get it, I'll be bound. And as for the means, it isn't for you or me either to criticise Mr. Wilman. God has given him apparently an unusual gift, and he is going to use it for our good. Be off with you and cut the grass, you old goose."
"Cut the grass! He, he!" This was a little joke between the vicar and the clerk, and Jimmy never failed to laugh at the sarcasm (it had been so long since there had been a blade of grass to cut). "Well, well, let his punishment fall on his own hid!" said Jimmy piously.
"Jimmy," said the vicar, quite seriously this time, "if I wasn't a parson, I should tell you you're a regular old fool. There's a proverb somewhere (you won't find it in the Bible, so don't think you've caught me tripping) that says, 'God helps those who help themselves;' and do you honestly tell me that if we kneel down every Sunday and pray for rain, and don't accept every chance of getting good water that God puts in our way, that He will pay any heed to us? Must we have it in our own special way, or not at all? Jimmy, Jimmy, your argument won't hold water; you'd better come with me and see how it's done."
But Jimmy scorned the suggestion, and went off mumbling about judgements to come, and doers of iniquities, and witches, and soothsayers, till he had grumbled himself out of the churchyard and up the lane till he reached his own door.
He found the house empty. Milly had been smitten with the quest, and had gone out to the dowser. Jimmy could hardly believe his ears when the next door neighbour--a lame woman who "would have gone on her own account if she could," as she stoutly protested when Jimmy lifted up his voice in a gabble of invective--informed him that Milly had asked her to see to the kettle, and the cake in the oven, while she went off to see the water found. "And small blame, too! Who wouldn't see a miracle when they could in these days when nothing happened that---"