‘Introduce them?’ Wyndham pauses, as if sounding the proposition, then gives way to wrath. ‘Hang it!’ says he; ‘you are worse than Job’s three comforters all rolled into one.’
CHAPTER XVII.
‘No hinge nor loop
To hang a doubt on.’
To-day is Sunday—the first Sunday since that eventful day when Susan had tackled and disarmed the thief, and certainly the warmest day that has come this season. In here in the church the heat is almost intolerable; and Susan, when the Litany begins, feels her devotion growing faint.
She has, indeed, up to this had a good deal of troublous excitement. To keep one eye on Jacky, who had left home in a distinctly resentful mood, and the other on Tommy, who doesn’t believe in churches as a satisfactory playground, is a task to which few would be equal; and even now, when Tommy has been reduced to silence by Betty and lemon-drops, the excessive warmth of the day leaves Susan too tired to follow the beautiful service.
Mechanically she says, ‘We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord’; but her mind is wandering, and presently her eyes begin to wander too.
The curate, how hideous he is, poor little man! and what a pity he is so painfully conscious of the loss of his front tooth! and what a lovely light that is from the window falling on his gown! It must be nice outside now. How the flies are buzzing on the panes, just like the organ! Maria Tanner should not be laughing like that; if father saw her he would be so angry, and Maria is such a nice girl, and so clever—took all the prizes at the diocesan examination last year—and her sister is considered quite an excellent housemaid by Lady Millbank. What a pretty bonnet Lady Millbank has on! Those violets suit her. Who is the man in the pew behind her? Why, that is the Crosby pew, and——
For one awful minute Susan feels the walls of the church closing in upon her; a sensation of faintness, a trembling of the knees, oppress her. She is conscious of all this, and then the mist fades away.
No, no; of course it is not true. It is impossible. A remarkable likeness, no more. She could laugh almost at her own folly, and very nearly does so in her nervous state; but providentially the sight of a gloomy black and white tablet, erected to the memory of a dead and gone Crosby, that stands out from the wall right before her, prevents this act of desecration.