"What a ghoulish sort of pleasure your father seems to take in this business," Nicholas remarked pensively when they were alone together. "I quite agree that it's sad enough, but it needn't pervade the whole conversation, surely."
"I suppose after to-morrow he'll be all right," said Lily.
She was faintly shocked at the criticism of Philip, although her reason admitted its justice.
"You do like Father, Nicholas dear, don't you?"
"My dear child, because one likes a person it needn't make one blind and deaf and dumb to their short-comings," said her husband cheerfully.
Lily assimilated in silence the obvious common-sense of the dictum, that all the same came to her as something almost new, and entirely revolutionary.
The next day, they attended Charlie Hardinge's funeral. Lily retained confused impressions of the smell of new crape, of the sound of decorous murmuring in the church, and then of stifled sobbing as Janet and Sylvia took their places. Ethel Hardinge's thick veil fell over her face, but Lily did not think that she shed tears.
The organist struggled with unusual music, obviously beyond the capabilities of the player, and presently to familiar strains the choir sang:
"Light's abode, celestial Salem,
Visions whence true peace doth spring,