"Yes—the best religions and the best wine: they go together. Could ever an Anglo-Saxon have built that, think you?" demanded Brother Copas with a backward jerk of the head and glance up at the vaulted roof. "But to my moral.—All this talk of Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and the rest is rubbish. We are English by chemical action of a score of interfused bloods. That man is a fool who speaks as though, at this point of time, they could be separated: had he the power to put his nonsense into practice he would be a wicked fool. And so I say, Mr. Simeon, that the Roundheads—no pure Anglo-Saxon, by the way, ever had a round head—who mixed up the dead dust in the caskets aloft there, were really leaving us a sound historical lesson—"
But here Mr. Simeon turned at the sound of a brisk footstep. Dr. Windeatt had just entered by the western door.
"You'll excuse me? I promised the Doctor to blow the organ for him."
"Do people blow upon organs?" asked Corona, suddenly interested. "I thought they played upon them the same as pianos, only with little things that pulled out at the sides."
"Come and see," Mr. Simeon invited her, smiling.
The three went around to the back of the organ loft. By and by when Mr. Simeon began to pump, and after a minute, a quiet adagio, rising upon a throb of air, stole along the aisles as though an angel spoke in it, or the very spirit of the building, tears sprang into the child's eyes and overflowed. She supposed that Mr. Simeon alone was working this miracle.… Blinking more tears away, she stared at him, meeting his mild, half-quizzical gaze as he stooped and rose and stooped again over the bellows.
Brother Copas, touching her elbow, signed to her to come away. She obeyed, very reluctantly. By a small doorway in the southern aisle she followed him out into the sunshine of the Cathedral Close.
"But how does he do it?" she demanded. "He doesn't look a bit as if he could do anything like that—not in repose."
Brother Copas eyed her and took snuff. "He and the like of him don't touch the stops, my dear. He and the like of him do better; they supply the afflatus."
O ye holy and humble Men of heart, bless ye the Lord: praise Him, and magnify Him for ever!