By this time Plucritus had recovered his good temper. I never yet had known him upset for long, since though by nature he never forgave he never let this interfere with his good-companionship.
“Now,” said he, “look around, do, and don’t miss anything worth seeing.”
“But what is there to see?”
“A church service. And the church and the theatre are much united, so that when you go to church you see a play, and when you visit a theatre you see the other thing. Now, observe.”
When we had entered the church had been empty, but now it began to fill.
The first to enter was a most elegantly-gowned woman accompanied by two children.
She rustled up the central aisle and took her position, as did the girl and boy to the further side of her. Next she brought out a silver smelling-salts bottle, and a bottle of scent with a silver stopper, and other paraphernalia, and set them by the side of her.
“She has nerves,” Plucritus remarked soothingly to me. “Poor thing! what it must be to be afflicted like that!”
The children, in the meantime, having stared about, began whispering to one another. She smiled maternally, but let them be.
“Poor little things,” he observed. “What an affliction for them to be mewed up here.”