“It’s lucky, then, that you have still so many questions,” observed Jack. “By the way, your sister did not mind about the picture, did she? She set me so thoroughly at my ease about it that until this evening it really never occurred to me that she easily might.”
“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” said Arthur.
“Good. I shall go to bed. When is breakfast?”
Arthur got up and lit a couple of candles.
“Breakfast is when you come down,” he said. “We bind ourselves to nothing.”
CHAPTER XII
The Avesham family manner of attending Cathedral was characteristic. Miss Fortescue was always the first to start, and she reached her seat in the choir five minutes before service began. She took with her a Bible, a prayer-book, and a large tune hymn-book, and frowned abstractedly at them all. Jeannie started about seven minutes after her, and was almost invariably just late, so that she had to sit in the nave close to the choir. Arthur considered it sufficient to arrive during the first lesson, and he sat at the far end of the nave, where he could hear nothing but the singing. It followed, therefore, as a corollary that he left before the sermon. Jack on this particular morning proposed to stay at home and go to the afternoon service. Thus, when Arthur came through the garden on his way to the first lesson, he found him in a large chair underneath the mulberry-tree. He paused a moment.
“Would it seem more hospitable if I didn’t go to Cathedral?” he asked. “Remember, I rank hospitality very high among the cardinal virtues.”
“Be honest,” said Jack.
“Then perhaps I had better go to Cathedral,” he said. “But you might have made it easier for me to stop. Well, good-bye; I shall come out before the sermon.”