“Do you know who wrote it?” she demanded menacingly.
“I’m afraid I don’t remember,” he said. The hymn was one of his earliest recollections, but it had never occurred to him to be curious as to its authorship.
Her lips sneered. “Dr Watts, of course!” she snapped.
He could hear her, beneath the tremendous chanting from the Square, repeating the words to herself with her precise and impressive articulation.
Volume Two--Chapter Thirteen.
The Oldest Sunday-School Teacher.
From the elevation of his barrel Edwin could survey, in the lordly and negligent manner of people on a height, all the detail of his immediate surroundings. Presently, in common with Hilda and the other aristocrats of barrels, he became aware of the increased vivacity of a scene which was passing at a little distance, near a hokey-pokey barrow. The chief actors in the affair appeared to be a young policeman, the owner of the hokey-pokey barrow, and an old man. It speedily grew into one of those episodes which, occurring on the outskirts of some episode immensely greater, draw too much attention to themselves and thereby outrage the sense of proportion residing in most plain men, and especially in most policemen.
“Give him a ha’porth o’ hokey,” said a derisive voice. “He hasn’t got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na’.” There was a general guffaw from the little rabble about the barrow.