“I am not literary,” said Doll, who always thought it necessary to explain that he was not what no one thought he was.  “I hate all that sort of thing.  Utter rot, I call it.  For goodness’ sake, Scarlett, sit tight.  I must be decent to the beast in my own house, and if you go I shall have to have him alone jawing at me till all hours of the night in the smoking-room.”

Hugh was easily persuaded, and so it came about that the morning congregation at Warpington had the advantage of furtively watching Hugh and Mr. Tristram as they sat together in the carved Wilderleigh pew, with Sybell and Rachel at one end of it, and Doll at the other.  No one looked at Rachel.  Her hat attracted a momentary attention, but her face none.

The Miss Pratts, on the contrary, well caparisoned by their man milliner, well groomed, well curled, were a marked feature of the sparse congregation.  The spectator of so many points, all made the most of, unconsciously felt with a sense of oppression that everything that could be done had been done.  No stone had been left unturned.

Their brother, Captain Algernon Pratt, sitting behind them, looked critically at them, and owned that they were smart women.  But he was not entirely satisfied with them, as he had been in the old days, before he went into the Guards and began the real work of his life, raising himself in society.

Captain Pratt was a tall, pale young man—­assez beau garcon—­faultlessly dressed, with a quiet acquired manner.  He was not ill-looking, the long upper lip concealed by a perfectly kept mustache, but the haggard eye and the thin line in the cheek, which did not suggest thought and overwork as their cause, made his appearance vaguely repellent.

     “Jesu, lover of my soul,”

sang the shrill voices of the choir-boys, echoed by Regie and Mary, standing together, holding their joint hymnbook exactly equally between them, their two small thumbs touching.

Fraeulein, on Hester’s other side, was singing with her whole soul, accompanied by a pendulous movement of the body: 

     “Cover my defenceless ’ead,
     Wiz ze sadow of Zy wing.”

Mr. Gresley, after baying like a blood-hound through the opening verses, ascended the pulpit and engaged in prayer.  The congregation amened and settled itself.  Mary leaned her blond head against her mother, Regie against Hester.

The supreme moment of the week had come for Mr. Gresley.

He gave out the text: 

“Can the blind lead the blind?  Shall they not both fall into the ditch?”

* * * * *

All of us who are Churchmen are aware that the sermon is a period admirably suited for quiet reflection.

“A good woman loves but once,” said Mr. Tristram to himself, in an attitude of attention, his fine eyes fixed decorously on a pillar in front of him.  Some of us would be as helpless without a Bowdlerized generality or a platitude to sustain our minds as the invalid would be without his peptonized beef-tea.