“And—but then I have none of the trouble of it—I can’t help liking the notion of sending out the Church to the island whence the Church came home to us.”
“Yes—” said Ethel, “if we could do it without holding forth!”
“Come, Ethel, it is much better than the bazaar—it is no field for vanity.”
“Certainly not,” said Ethel. “What a mess every one will make! Oh, if I could but stay away, like Harry! There will be Dr. Hoxton being sonorous and prosy, and Mr. Lake will stammer, and that will be nothing to the misery of our own people’s work. George will flounder, and look at Flora, and she will sit with her eyes on the ground, and Dr. Spencer will come out of his proper self, and be complimentary to people who deserve it no more!—And Norman! I wish I could run away!”
“Richard says we do not guess how well Norman speaks.”
“Richard thinks Norman can do anything he can’t do himself! It is all chance—he may do very well, if he gets into his ‘funny state’, but he always suffers for that, and he will certainly put one into an agony at the outset. I wish Dr. Spencer would have let him alone! And then there will be that Sir Henry, whom I can’t abide! Oh, I wish I were more charitable, like Miss Bracy and Mary, who will think all so beautiful!”
“So will you, when you come home,” said Margaret.
“If I could only be talking to Cherry, and Dame Hall! I think the school children enter into it very nicely, Margaret. Did I tell you how nicely Ellen Reid answered about the hymn, ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’? She did not seem to have made it a mere geographical lesson, like Fanny Grigg—”
Ethel’s misanthropy was happily conducted off via the Cocksmoor children, and any lingering remains were dissipated by her amusement at Dr. Spencer’s ecstasy on seeing Dr. May assume his red robe of office, to go to the minster in state, with the Town Council. He walked round and round his friend, called him Nicholas Randall redivivus, quoted Dogberry, and affronted Gertrude, who had a dim idea that he was making game of papa.
Ethel was one of those to whom representation was such a penance, that a festival, necessitating hospitality to guests of her own rank, was burden enough seriously to disturb the repose of thankfulness for the attainment of her object, and to render difficult the recueillement which she needed for the praise and prayer that she felt due from her, and which seemed to oppress her heart, by a sense of inadequacy of her partial expression. It was well for her that the day began with the calm service in the minster, where it was her own fault if cares haunted her, and she could confess the sin of her irritated sensations, and wishes to have all her own way, and then, as ever, be led aright into thanksgiving for the unlooked-for crowning of her labours.