"Well, John," Mrs. Rossitter answered rather fretfully, feeling conscious of a temporary oblivion on her own part in the middle of the sermon, "it was no wonder if any one went to sleep; the church was so hot; I felt quite faint myself."
And she felt whether her bonnet had got pushed on one side, and hoped she had not wakened with a snore.
John laughed: "I don't mean a sight to see that way, mother; that's not so very unusual at Martel; but it was her absorbed interest that struck me as something out of the way."
"It must have been one of the young women at Purts."
"My dear mother, don't insult those elegant creatures by supposing they would put on anything half so respectable as my old woman's bonnet; they would rather die first."
"Then I don't know who it could have been, unless it was Miss Toosey—lavender ribbons and hair done in a little curl on each side? Ah, then it is. Her father was old Toosey the doctor; he was parish doctor when we first came to Brooklands: and she was a pretty young girl, in a green spencer; and your father used to say"—
And here followed reminiscences unconnected with Miss Toosey's Mission, which I need not chronicle.
Mrs. Rossitter lived two miles from Martel, at Brooklands, and she attended church regularly, twice on Sunday, "because it is a duty to set a right example to the lower orders." So the lower orders around Brooklands—mostly, as far as the men were concerned, smoking their pipes in their shirt sleeves, hanging over a pigsty, or nursing their babies; mostly, as far as the women were concerned, waxing fierce in preparations for dinner, or gossiping with their next-door neighbors—saw the Brooklands brougham pass four times on Sunday; and the children ran after and shouted "Whip behind!" and the babies were possessed with suicidal interest in the horses' feet, and toddled, or crawled, or rolled into imminent danger, according to their age or walking capacities.
When John Rossitter was down from London, he went with his mother; and when he was not, she went alone, because Humphrey altogether declined to go.
"It was more than any fellow could stand," he said, gnawing his yellow mustache, and looking down at his mother with those handsome, idle gray eyes of his, which were the most convincing of arguments, before which all her excellent reasons for attending church—such as "what people would say," and "how would it look," and "what a bad example it would set," if he did not go—crumbled to ashes. She found John more amenable; but I do not on this account credit John with any great superiority to Humphrey only that he had greater powers of endurance, and was not so sure as Humphrey that the very surest way to please his mother was to please himself. Then, too, Sunday mornings at Brooklands were apt to hang heavy on his hands, for he had not the resources of Humphrey. He could not spend an hour or two in contented contemplation of a family of fox-terrier puppies; he found that "the points" of the very cleverest little mare in creation palled after five minutes' serious consideration, and that the conversation of grooms and stablemen still left a good deal to be desired in the way of entertainment; in fact, he had none of the elevated and refined tastes of an English country gentleman; so John Rossitter went to church with his mother, and endured, with equal stoicism, sermons from Mr. Peters, Mr. Glover, or Mr. Malone. He did not yawn in the undisguised manner of Dr. Gardener Jones opposite, who let every one see what a fine set of teeth he had, and healthy red tongue, at short intervals; he did not go to sleep and snore like old Mrs. Robbins, and one or two more; but when the regulation half hour was over, his eyebrows would rise and the calm inattention of his face became ruffled, and his hand move quietly to his waistcoat pocket and his watch appear, an action which Mr. Glover felt acutely in every fibre, though his back was turned to John Rossitter, and he would grow red to the very finger-tips, and his "finally," "lastly," and "in conclusion" would get sadly muddled in his nervous efforts to make short cuts to the end. So strong had this habit of inattention become, that it would have required something much more striking than our missionary Bishop to startle him out of it; and it was only the sight of Miss Toosey's face that brought back his thoughts from their wanderings, to Martel church and its sleepy congregation, and the Bishop's voice from the high pulpit. He could see her through a vista of heads between Mr. Cooper's bald head and Miss Purts's feathers and pink rosebuds; now and then the view was cut off by Mrs. Robbins giving a convulsive nod, or one of the little Miss Coopers fidgeting up a broad-brimmed hat.