The men that had raised those walls and carved the devices on the pillars, who were they?
Was there no record left, no voice to tell of the labour, and the toil, and the spirit which had moved them to do their work well?
Bryda's small figure was hidden in the deep pews which then disfigured the choir, and it was only when she stood up, and was raised above the ledge of the seat by a green baize hassock, that she could see the congregation or could be seen by them.
Mrs Lambert sat through the service, fanning herself at intervals and smelling her salts, though she whispered the prayers after the clergyman and made the responses in an audible voice.
Bryda was in a dream, and thinking alternately of her grandfather, Betty, and the young Squire. Poor child, she had never been taught that the burden of all troubles and anxieties and sorrows can be laid at the feet of the Father who pities His children. He was a God very far off to Bryda Palmer, as to the great majority of girls in her position of life, and, indeed, in any position of life, in the last decades of the eighteenth century.
The sermon was a dry dissertation to which no one listened, to judge by the number of sleepers in the pews, who woke with a start when the organ pealed forth the welcome tidings that the service was over.
At the door of the cathedral Bryda saw, to her great discomforture, Mr Bayfield.
He smiled and made a low bow, which Bryda returned by a curtsey, and then was passing on laden with her heavy books, when the Squire said, 'Permit me,' putting his hand on the heavy Bible.
'No; I thank you, sir,' Bryda said, and Mrs Lambert turned sharply round.
'Miss Palmer, you will oblige me by attending to your duties.'