'Set up the domestic halter, as Mrs. Shapcote says,' added Lance.
'We might make that organ available,' said Felix, 'and screen off the end part of the long room where it stands, for a permanency.'
'Yes, there's rather a nice window down there with our Rood in it—nothing incongruous,' said Clement, 'if Lance can only cure the organ.'
'Meantime, I suppose we had better have the servants in here, and use the piano.'
'They will be all dispersed, and not like to come in,' said Wilmet.
'Possibly,' said Felix, 'but I shall go and see. I have a feeling against beginning our first night in our new home without some collective commendation of ourselves.'
'If we had but an authorized form for dedicating a new home, like the Russian Church,' said Clement.
'You have not thought of anything in especial. Well, see.' And he pointed to some marks in the prayer-book he left in Clement's hand, while he left the room for a word or two, which he thought would better prepare the household than a peremptory bell.
Clement was struck, as indeed they all were, with his selection. There was the Psalm, 'Except the Lord build the house;' a short lesson (the reading of which Felix reserved to himself), namely, the words from Deuteronomy, against the presumption of prosperity; and the Collects, 'Prevent us O Lord in all our doings,' 'Charity,' 'the sundry and manifold changes of the world,' and 'things temporal and things eternal;' and then came the hymn—it was, 'Lead Thou me on.' Felix believed he had heard its echoes in his little bed that last Sunday night, and therefore wished for it, though it seemed a strange choice for the new house. How Edward and Mary must have felt that 'one step enough for me,' when they went forth with their little ones into the moor and fen! But in this hour of restoration, was it still to be a looking forth into mist and fog, led only by the kindly Light,
'Till through the dawn the Angel faces smile.'