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cracked black shoes. Despite bow legs, the height was six foot three, and the frame was formidable. ‘I’m not,’ the Rector had once complacently remarked, ‘the type of thing you want to meet unexpectedly on a dark night.’
    The Major said, ‘Morning, Rector. This is Padmore, who’s here on a visit.’
    â€˜How do,’ said the Rector. ‘Morning, Fen. What’s that you’ve got in that sack?’
    â€˜It’s a pig’s head. Mrs Clotworthy’s birthday pig’s head, actually. I picked it up from her porch this morning. She gave it me because I’m an M.A.’
    â€˜Poor woman’s obviously getting a bit gaga,’ said the Rector. ‘Ah well, we all come to it, if we live long enough. I don’t imagine I shall, mind, but most of us do.’
    The terrified little man in grey said, ‘I’m from Sweb.’
    â€˜How do you do?’ said Padmore. ‘From
where?’
he asked.
    â€˜Acronym,’ said the Major. ‘Stands for South Western Electricity Board. They think that if they call themselves Sweb, don’t you know, it’ll make people look on them as friends.’ He shook his head sadly at the thought of so much innocence exposed in a harsh world, like babies on rocks outside Sparta.
    â€˜Damn the man if he doesn’t want to put up a pylon in my paddock,’ said the Rector.
    â€˜They want to put pylons everywhere,’ said Fen.
    â€˜Every effort is made to safeguard the amenities,’ the man from Sweb said in a high, tremulous voice. ‘
Every
effort.’
    â€˜I can safeguard my amenities without any help from you, thanks very much,’ said the Rector. ‘You go and safeguard someone else’s amenities. Oh, and by the way, now I come to think of it, since you’re in the neighbourhood you can look in at the Church Fête this afternoon. Do you a world of good.’
    The man from Sweb smirked wretchedly. He was neat as a henbird, all in grey except for shoes and tie. Despite the warmth of the day he wore an overcoat and a homburg hat with a diminutive turned-up brim. His face was round and pink, a uniform clear pink like the inside of a young cat’s mouth; his eyes were blue and protruding. He was clean-shaven. His little pot-belly kept his overcoat buttons occupied without straining them too noticeably.
    â€˜Church Fête? I - I’m not religious, I’m afraid,’ he managed to get out.
    â€˜If you’re not religious, you do well to be afraid,’ said the Rector. ‘However, we’ve no objection to taking money from the heathen, I’m glad to be able to say. If you can’t get to the Fête, you can make your contribution to me personally, now.’
    â€˜I - I’m afraid that at the moment it’s not - not quite convenient to - to -’
    â€˜Tight-fisted as well as a heathen,’ the Rector commented. ‘Well now, I hope you’re quite clear in your mind about this pylon proposal. I reject it.’
    â€˜Y-you understand that we have p-powers to obtain a c-c-c-compulsory order,’ the man from Sweb trepidantly squeaked.
    â€˜Don’t you try threatening me, my man,’ said the Rector, almost kindly. ‘I’ve made my decision, and that’s the end of that. So now be off with you.’ He frowned slightly, apparently feeling that this peremptoriness ought in Christian charity to be softened a little, perhaps with a touch of light humour. ‘Be off with you,’ he amended, ‘or I’ll chop off your feet with these shears, and leave you to run away on your bleeding stumps.’
    At this, the man from Sweb gave a small, moaning cry, turned from them and stumbled out of the clearing. Diminishingly they heard him blundering into shrubs and hedges as he tried to find his way back to the gate.
    â€˜Uncivil sort of a fellow,’ the Rector remarked. ‘Didn’t even have the elementary