Perhaps it was altogether more gratification than enjoyment, where all was so new and strange; but the second evening was pleasanter than the first, and the last breakfast made them like old friends. The introductions during those two evenings had been very opportune, in giving a little foothold among the denizens of the county before the great gathering of the antiquaries.
Ewmouth had been selected as head-quarters, on account of its castle, its church, and a bit of Roman wall, besides a Roman villa, and several curious churches within distance for excursions. The names of readers of papers were very promising, and included 'Mediæval Seals, by the Reverend Christopher Harewood.' These lectures were to be given in the mornings; in the afternoons the excursions were to take place, and one evening there was to be a soirée at Mr. Welsh's.
Tickets for the week cost a guinea. Felix took one apiece for himself and Geraldine; and Wilmet, not caring for such things, made her ticket over to Robina. This week would nearly finish William Harewood's holiday. A few days later he was to meet a reading-party at a vast old farm-house called Penbeacon, in the moors at the source of the Leston—five miles off, but still in the vast straggling parish, whose acreage little corresponded to its population.
Clement and the Harewoods, meantime, spent their leisure moments in routing in Abednego Tripp's rubbish holes, and bringing out quantities of fragments of lace-work canopies, heads of saints and demons, and shattered Priors' coffin-lids. The black cloth came down; two divisions of the three-decker were stored away in the hay-loft over the vicarage-stable. The third and lowest was to serve Clement for his sermon, and Abednego must make the best of a place in the choir. As to the trumpeting angel at the top of the sounding-board, Felix was so constant to it, that he carefully dusted it, proved it to be really rather graceful, and set it up against the wall in his own bedroom. Will Harewood declared it was the idol representing the Pursuivant, and he rejoined that he only hoped that the Pursuivant might sound in accordance with that trumpet.
[1] The real word is too sacred for quotation. (Author)— (transcriber's note: "real word": 'Jesus', in the original hymn (J. Proctor and I.D. Sankey, 'Nothing, either great or small').
[CHAPTER XXXVIII.]
K. T.
'So black of hue,
With orange tawny Bill.'
Midsummer Night's Dream.