'Now prays' were to no purpose; Mrs. Harewood professed only to want an excuse for staying at home—she did not want to be done up with running after her girls to the four ends of the Mead, when it was a long step for her to begin with. Off with them.
So when Wilmet was satisfied that Geraldine was comfortable, the five moved off—Felix and Alice, Angel in Wilmet's hand, and Lance's and Robina's tongues wagging so fast that the wonder was how either caught a word of what the other was saying.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Harewood, tossing her bonnet and gloves aside, in perfect indifference to the exposure of the curious structure of red and grey hair she thus revealed, lavished meats and drinks upon her guest, waiting on her with such kindness, that in spite of all weariness and craving for quiet after these deep and wonderful impressions, it was impossible not to enjoy that warmth of heart. There was exactly the tender motherliness that even Wilmet and Sister Constance could not give.
It was charming to hear how fond Mrs. Harewood was of Lance, and how the having such a companion had made it possible to keep her Willie at the cathedral school, where the mixture of lads was great, but the master first-rate. He thought highly of the promise of both; 'but, to tell the truth,' said Mrs. Harewood, as she sat and fanned herself with her husband's trencher cap, looking more than ever like a frog in a strawberry bed, 'though my Willie is the cleverest boy in the school, little good his cleverness would have done him, and he would have been harum-scarum Bill more than ever, if it were not for Lance. So say his father and brother Jack; so that they will not be for his going to a public school unless Lance were sure of it too.'
'Will not they be able to stay on here?'
Mrs. Harewood explained that the year that the barristers—choristers she meant—were sixteen, when their voices were usually unserviceable, they, together with those of like age in the school, were subjected to an examination, and the foremost scholar obtained an exhibition, in virtue of which he could remain free of expense for another two years, and then could try for one of the Minsterham scholarships at one of the colleges at Cambridge. Those who failed, either had to pay like the ordinary schoolboys, or left the school.
Dear Mrs. Harewood was a perfect Malaprop, and puzzled Geraldine by continually calling the present occasion the rural meeting, and other like slips, uncommonly comical in a well-educated woman with the words she knew best.
All this, and a great deal more—about the shy woman-hating organist, and the unluckiness of the dissenter—no, precentor—having a sick wife, and the legal difficulties that prevented building a better house for the boarders than the queer long room where they lodged, between the cloister and the Bailey—the proper name of the little court by which Geraldine had come—was poured out; and kind as it was, there was a certain sense of having been talked to death.
A whole flood of Harewoods, Underwoods, and untold numbers besides, swept into the room as the bell began to ring for Evensong. Most sincere were Cherry's entreaties that she might be left alone. She could not go back to her coign of vantage, 'it had been too beautiful for her to bear more,' she said; and she severally declined offers of companionship from three female Harewoods and two sisters, telling Wilmet at last that all she wanted was to be still and alone.
Alone she was, but not still, for there was nothing to hinder the magnificent volume of sound that surged around the Cathedral from coming to her; and she could trace the service all along—in chant, pealing mighty Amens, with the hush between, in anthem, and in jubilant hymn. She was more calmly happy than in the oppressive grandeur of the morning, as she lay there, in the cool drawing-room, with the open window veiled by loose sprays of untrimmed roses, and sacred prints looking down from the walls.