Margaret Ingelow made no reply. She was a fair, good-looking girl of twenty-five, with a thoughtful, refined face. Her bright young sister’s levity often jarred upon her uncomfortably when exercised upon sacred or ecclesiastical subjects, for which she herself entertained the profoundest reverence. Left motherless at an early age, upon her had devolved the care of the younger children, and this, combined with her position as head of the household, had endowed the rector’s eldest daughter with a gravity of thought and manner beyond her years.
“Olive, look! Who is that, I wonder!” exclaimed Sophie, aged seventeen.
“That” was a masculine figure a little in front on the opposite side of the street, for they had left the churchyard now. Olive, following her sister’s glance, recognised the stranger who had attracted her notice in church.
“Perhaps someone down here for the Whitsun holidays,” struck in Margaret’s quiet voice. But for some occult reason the remark was received by Olive with a little frown.
“In other words, something between a cheap trippist and a bank clerk,” she said. “No—not exactly.”
“Keep your temper, Olive dear,” laughed Sophie maliciously. “We didn’t know the subject was a tender one or we’d have—”
“Why, what a pace you girls walk at!” cried a cheery voice behind them. “I thought I should have to return home in my own sweet society.”
“Oh, father, there you are at last,” cried Margaret, stopping as the rector joined them. “We quite thought it would be of no use waiting.”
“That tiresome Mr Barnes always keeps you prosing in the vestry for half an hour,” struck in Sophie. “What an old bore he is! I can’t see the use of churchwardens at all.”
“Our friends at the Radical club do, dear,” rejoined her father with a twinkle in his eyes. “How on earth would they emphasise their arguments without a goodly number of ‘churchwardens’ to smash?”