‘My dear girl,’ he said, ‘how good and industrious you are.’
‘I shall get it done well before Christmas,’ whispered Alice.
‘How pleased the herald angels will be!’ he answered.
Alice gave a great jerk of emotion which most unfortunately upset her embroidery-frame, which fell off the table with a crash that might have awaked the dead, and certainly awoke the living.
‘And vestments,’ said Mrs Keeling again going on precisely at the point where sleep had overtaken her, ‘I can’t see that there’s any harm in them, though your father——’
There was a moment’s dead silence as she became drowsily aware that there was somebody else in the room. Mr Silverdale’s gay laugh, as he gave a final pressure to Alice’s hand, told her who it was.
‘Dear lady,’ he said. ‘Go on with your Protestant exhortations. I have been exhorting all afternoon, and I am so tired of my own exhortations. We will listen, and try to agree with you, won’t we, Miss Alice?’
Mrs Keeling got up in some confusion.
‘Bless me, to imagine your having come in while I was so busy thinking about what I had been reading that I never heard the door open,’ she said, hastily picking up the book which had fallen face downwards on the floor. ‘Well, I’m sure it’s time for tea. How the evenings draw in! But there are unpleasanter things than a muffin and a chat by the fire when all’s said and done.’
Alice seemed inclined to prefer her pomegranates to muffins, and had to be personally conducted from her work, and told she was naughty by Mr Silverdale, who sat on the hearthrug with woollen stockings and very muddy boots protruding from below his cassock, for he had had a game of football with his boys’ club before his afternoon preaching. He had only just had time to put on his cassock and snatch up his shepherd’s crook when the game was over, and ran to church, getting there in the nick of time. But he had kicked two goals at his football, and talked to twice that number of penitent souls afterwards in the vestry, so, as he delightedly exclaimed, he had had excellent sport. And he poked the fire with his shepherd’s crook.