“There always is, damn ’em,” said that very excellent young man.
Whit-Monday in Yorkshire is the saturnalia of the Sunday schools, a festival to which both teachers and taught look forward with delighted anticipation. A committee of the teachers and those members of the congregation who are supposed to be musically gifted, select the hymns to be sung at the services and at the halts of the procession on its route, and the discussion and final settling of the hymn-sheets are not always attended by the harmony appropriate to the occasion. The lives of the organist and the choirmaster are made a burden to them, and before the sheet reaches the printer there is often a coolness between ladies who had vowed eternal friendship. The scholars are very zealously drilled by the choirmaster, the girls singing with zest at the “practices,” the boys stimulating their attention by pulling their hair, but lifting up their own voices under protest. The young ladies of the Sunday School wear a subdued modification of their Sunday best at the week-night practices and as they have neither father nor mother to escort them home at the somewhat late hour to which the practices are prolonged, have to make shift with the arm of a blushing and embarrassed teacher from the Boys’ School, and, to do them justice, the young ladies cheerfully submit to be thus accompanied. If it should be discovered during the homeward walk of this sober minded Phyllis and Stephen of the mills that their voices go well together, the practising at the school not unfrequently conduces to domestic duets, never, let us hope, to matrimonial discords. An ingenuous bride, not long ago, assured the writer that she simply doted on the Sunday School. When asked for the reason, she naively confessed that it was there she first met her Billy. As this frank young lady has since sent in her resignation as a teacher, it is to be assumed that she now dotes on Billy to the detriment of the Sunday School; but she has not thought it necessary to return the time-piece presented to her by her fellow-teachers on the eve of her wedding-day.
He must be a very callous individual indeed who does not delight in the sight of the scholars as they marshal under the folds of the School flag, blazoned with the name of the chapel and borne in a somewhat staggering fashion by sturdy teachers who find consolation for their tribulations in the honour of being standard-bearers. Even a slattern mother and a drunken father will make a shift at sacrifice to turn the “childer” out decent for the “Whissun treat.” It is indeed the time of year when the yearly Sunday suit is chosen. Poverty must indeed have made its home in the house of a Yorkshire mill-hand if a white muslin frock and brilliant sash and a new straw hat with bright ribbons cannot be found for the girls, and a new suit, be the material never so rough, for the lads. It is a feast to the eyes to see the young coquettes—a maid of five is often a promising if not a quite accomplished coquette—arrayed in all their glory, conscious of their charms and severely critical of the gowns of their comrades. There is the exhilaration of the strains of the brass band—which in all probability will be comfortably drunk before the day is out; there is the fluttering of the silken banners in the summer breeze, and, above all, there is the consciousness of being the beheld of all beholders. The boys look either bored or ashamed of themselves and wish they were nearer the buns and nuts, for which they are gloomily conscious they will have to pay by submitting to the humiliating exactions of kiss-in-the-ring. Every door of the village is open as the long procession winds through the narrow streets, and anxious matrons and elder sisters watch for their own to see the sash has retained its bunch and the flounces have not given: also to receive the soothing assurance that Annie or Lizzie is dressed as smart as the best of them. Then there is the singing of a hymn at the minister’s house and before the deacons’ and—pleasantest feature of all the day’s proceedings—the lifting of the sweet young voices under the window of a sick companion who listens from a tear-stained pillow to the air she may never sing again. The distinction almost compensates for pain.
Among those watched the procession was Ben Garside, Hannah, and Lucy. She had been wheeled to the open door. Her father and mother stood on the other side. Tom was in his bedroom, “fettling hissen,” as Hannah put it. Ben had put on his better suit, and shaved himself in honour of the holiday,—the last holiday of the year for working-folk till Christmas should come again. There were no Bank Holidays in those days. Hannah had put on her somewhat rusty silk dress, and would have scorned to acknowledge that it pinched round the waist more than it did a year before. As the rear rank of the scholars and the last banner disappeared up the street, Tom’s feet were heard descending the stairs.
“Tom ’ll be for off, nah,” said Hannah, “pity he couldn’t ha’ his baggin’ so’s things wouldn’t be lyin’ abaat all hours.”
“Now Ben,” said Tom, cheerily, “I’m ready, are you?”
“By Gosh! Aw sud think yo’ are ready: stan’ ther an’ let’s ha’ a looik at yo’.”
Tom laughed, and stood to attention. “Do the creases show very much?” he asked, “I feel like a draper’s parcel wrapped in brown paper.”
It was a great event. Tom had got a suit of navy blue serge for the summer, and it fitted him like a glove.
“Aw mun gi’ yo’ a pinch for new,” said Hannah, nipping the upper arm.