"What is the name?" Barry asked politely.
She held the book up in the firelight, flaunting it in the face of the man who had come so far with his love and his brave little ring. It was the darkest hour of her pilotless groping.
Leslie's laugh rang. The little group took it up. Then Leslie himself appeared to become the centre of interest. He began telling a story which involved a great many gestures. At one stage he even jumped up and turned a cartwheel, and one of the girls in the crowd exclaimed: "Can't you just see it?"
"Oh, what shall I do?" thought Louise, fighting her tears.
The moon climbed slowly up the sky, and the young boys, one after another, with loud shrieks of joy, silhouetted themselves darkly against her gleaming face.
And then the speech making began.
The Rev. Goodman led off. He had something in the nature of a set speech for the occasion, which varied surprisingly little from year to year. It bade the guests welcome, always in the same felicitous terms, and contained the same allusions to the salubriousness of the climate, the unmatchable beauty of their Point. Alluding to God's Great Out-of-Doors, the Rev. Goodman would invariably employ the same grand gesture.
"And now," he concluded, "I am sure, dear friends, we feel a gratitude in our hearts to the Father of All Goodness, who has guided our footsteps," et cetera, et cetera. "And may we all bow our heads with the Rev. Needham, and join him in prayer."
The Rev. Goodman sat down and the Rev. Needham scrambled to his feet. He closed his eyes very tight and prayed quite loud—as though defying Marjory to prevail against him here. It was the next thing to being right in the pulpit! But he felt her gazing at him in that shrewd way of hers which seemed saying: "Alfred, have you really got truth in your heart?" What did Marjory mean by looking at him that way? What right had she to question his faith and to speak of truth?
It was really a very good prayer, though perhaps just a little more earnest than the occasion actually required. When the prayer was finished, he sat down. (Naturally there was no applause.) All the other speakers would be applauded, but no applause lightened the sitting down of the Rev. Needham. However, there was a general stir in the camp, just as there is in church when backs, wearied with the Sabbath bending, straighten cheerfully for another seven days of sin.