“If you talk so loud,” said I, laughing despite myself, for he took such evident interest in them, “they will hear you.”
“Not they,” he remarked; “they are blind and deaf or they wouldn’t be here. When the choir comes in we shall have to move away, but we shall never be seen nor heard. Vestasian and I once stood at either end of this large building and shouted to one another as loud as we could on matters secular.”
“And what followed?”
“Nothing appreciable. They sang the Athanasian Creed from memory, I believe.”
Next came a rather poor girl, who walked up the aisle in a very undecided way and turned to the left, to a seat opposite the lady.
She knelt down and prayed for a long time, and when she got up Plucritus noted the time in a little note-book he carried. Then he said to me,—
“Would you be kind enough to go and see what is the particular scent that lady carries—eau-de-Cologne or lavender?”
“It won’t be lavender,” I replied, “that’s for the toilet.”
“But we must make sure.”
When I had discovered I returned to him.