‘That’s calling him a liar.’
‘Oh dear, I forgot that he said so himself. Then I suppose he must have done it. What a pity it seems.’
‘Cheer up! We must say what the old heathen lady said when they read the gospels to her.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, “Well, it was a long time ago, and we’ll hope that it wasn’t true!”’
‘O Frank, how can you tell such stories in a church. Do you really suppose that Mr. Pepys is in that wall?’
‘I presume that the monument marks the grave.’
‘There’s a little bit of plaster loose. Do you think I might take it?’
‘It isn’t quite the thing.’
‘But it can’t matter, and it isn’t wrong, and we are quite alone.’ She picked off the little flake of plaster, and her heart sprang into her mouth as she did so, for there came an indignant snort from her very elbow, and there was a queer little smoke-dried, black-dressed person who seemed to have risen, like the Eastern genii or a modern genius, in a single instant. A pair of black list slippers explained the silence of his approach.