“He did take that liberty,” conceded the Babe. “Let’s sit down outside the pavilion. I wish we could kick about. The Sabbath is made for man, and so is Sunday, and so are footballs.”
“But on Sunday the pavilion is locked up by man, and the footballs put inside.”
“It appears so. English people take Sunday too seriously, just as they take everything else, except me.”
“Anyhow, Stewart says you are a man of the world,” said Ealing.
“He does, and who are we to contradict him? Good Lord, there’s one o’clock striking. I must go home. There’s somebody coming to lunch at half-past. Reggie, get me a ticket for King’s this afternoon, will you?”
XIII.—King’s Chapel.
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.
Shelley.
Reggie and the Babe got into chapel just after the voluntary had begun, and slow soft notes came floating drowsily down from the echoes in the roof. The chapel and ante-chapel were both full, and from the door in the dim, mellow half-darkness, a sea of heads stretched up to the black wooden screen, through which streamed the light from the chapel itself. In the roof one could just see the delicate fan-shaped lines of vaulting springing across like lotus leaves from wall to wall, and the windows on the south side gleamed with dark, rich colour from the sky already turning red with the southwestern setting sun. As they went up the ante-chapel the Babe saw a seat still unoccupied, and preferred stopping there to going into the chapel.
KING’S COLLEGE. SCREEN AND GATEWAY.