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She stood, she knelt, her prayer book open upon the carved margin of the tomb, the slender crossed legs and paws of the alert little marble dog serving as so often before for bookrest. Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas!
Walking slowly for he felt played out, pretty thoroughly done for, as he put it, and beat back to the vicarage and his belated Sunday dinner: "And of such are the Kingdom of Heaven," James Horniblow said to himself perhaps truly. He also said other things, distinctly other things, in which occurred the name of Reginald Sawyer whose days as curate of Deadham were numbered.
"I am not going to change. I will leave my hat and things down here Laura can take them to my room later and have dinner as I am." During the course of that meal she explained how she had really quite failed to observe the hour when she left the Grey House. Commander and Mrs. Battye were at tea there; and the vicar Dr. Horniblow looked in afterwards.
He gave them credit for the wish to advance could they but find the way. All they needed was leadership, which Canon Horniblow evidently past his work was powerless to supply. He, Sawyer, came as a pioneer. Once they grasped that fact they would rally to him. The good Miss Minetts were rallying hard, so to speak, already. Oh! there was excellent material in Deadham among the gentlefolk.
Horniblow called also, flanked by her two girls, May and Doris plain, thick-set, energetic, well-meaning young persons, whom their shrewd mother loved, sheltered, rallied, and cherished, while perfectly aware of their limitations as to beauty and to brains. Immediately behind her slipped in Mrs. Cripps.
"You have discharged your difficult mission with a delicacy and consideration for which I am grateful; but I am unequal to discussing the subject in further detail just now. To me, you know, my brother is above criticism. Whatever incidents may may belong to former years, I accept without cavil or question, in silence dear Dr. Horniblow in silence.
Cripps, for example, hurried to offer himself as pall-bearer a request the more readily disposed of that there was no pall. While Archdeacon Verity, to cite a second example and from a higher social level, supported by his elder son Pontifex domestic chaplain to the Bishop of Harchester insisted on sharing with Canon Horniblow the melancholy honour of reading the burial service.
Horniblow thus expressed it when inviting me 'as representing The Hard. I was away when Damaris made this ill-judged excursion across the river to the Bar. Had she confided her intention to me, I should have used my authority and forbade her. But recently we have not been, I grieve to say, on altogether satisfactory terms, and our parting yesterday was constrained, I am afraid."
As she declared to Canon Horniblow, she accepted the incident without question or cavil for her brother. For herself, any possibility of stepping off the narrow path of virtue, and exploring the alluring, fragrant thickets disposed to left of it and to right, had never, ever so distantly, occurred to her. She arrived at The Hard with a bright colour and beating heart.
"If you please, ma'am," he said, touching his black bowler as he spoke, "I see Canon Horniblow coming along the road. I think it would be more suitable for him to give you an account of what has passed. He'll know how to put it with with the least unpleasantness to all parties. It isn't our place Mrs.
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