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Updated: May 31, 2025
A few of the neighboring poor had joined the train, and some children of the village were running hand in hand, now shouting with unthinking mirth, and now pausing to gaze, with childish curiosity on the grief of the mourner. As the funeral train approached the grave, the parson issued from the church-porch, arrayed in the surplice, with prayer-book in hand, and attended by the clerk.
William Dobbin stood in the church-porch, looking at it, a queer figure. The small crew of spectators jeered him. He was not thinking about them or their laughter. "Come home and have some tiffin, Dobbin," a voice cried behind him; as a pudgy hand was laid on his shoulder, and the honest fellow's reverie was interrupted. But the Captain had no heart to go a-feasting with Jos Sedley.
With the appearing of every gold-rimmed face the boy felt he had won another friend, a friend who would come and bend above him at night, keeping off the ugly visions which haunted his pillow visions of the gnawing monsters about the church-porch, evil-faced bats and dragons, giant worms and winged bristling hogs, a devil's flock who crept down from the stone-work at night and hunted the souls of sinful children through the town.
It was also the honor-giving and deferential custom in many New England churches, in the eighteenth century, for the entire congregation to remain respectfully standing within the pews at the end of the serice until the minister had descended from his lofty pulpit, opened the door of his wife's pew, and led her with stately dignity to the church-porch, where, were he and she genial and neighborly minded souls, they in turn stood and greeted with carefully adjusted degrees of warmth, interest, respect, or patronage, the different members of the congregation as they slowly passed out.
Gilbert Fenton thought so to-night, as he saw it in the full radiance of the western sunlight, the lips parted as the girl sang, the clear gray eyes looking upward. She was not alone: a portly genial-looking old man stood by her side, and accompanied her to the church-porch when the hymn was over. Here they both lingered a moment to shake hands with Mrs.
An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the gate; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he preceded me to the church-porch, and rapped.
He was trembling and pale when at last they reached the bottom of the winding stair and stepped out on to the flags of the church-porch. Then suddenly the keeper caught Cyril and Robert each by an arm. 'You bring along the gells, sir, said he; 'you and Andrew can manage them. 'Let go! said Cyril; 'we aren't running away. We haven't hurt your old church. Leave go!
I soon came across him: he was playing jackstones with some other boys in the church-porch. I called him aside, and, hardly waiting to take breath, I stammered out that my parents were very angry with me for giving the watch away, and that if he was willing to give it back to me I would gladly pay him for it. I had brought an Elizabeth ruble with me, which was all my savings.
To the measured gestures of the little preachers were corresponding words learned by heart and false enough to make one squint. To the comic encouragement, to the "consolations lavished" in prize-book phrases by the voices of young urchins with colds, were the affecting benedictions, the whining and piteous mummeries of a church-porch after vespers.
When all was over, Count Nobili was carried up the hill back to Corellia, in triumph, on the shoulders of Pietro the baker, and Oreste, the strongest of the brothers. Every soul of the poor townsfolk women as well as men who had not gone down to help had risen, and was out. They had put lights into their windows. They crowded the doorways. The market-place was full, and the church-porch.
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