Ned suddenly burst out laughing. "Why the deuce should we ask? You'd rather dine and so would I. That's simplicity itself; besides, we can go to church or chapel and confess the sin of omission meanwhile--if you like."
Ted looked at him with gloomy virtue. "Of course we must ask--at any rate I shall," he replied haughtily. He felt in his way exactly as his companion did, that is, as if every atom of life in him had been stirred to its depths; but conventional morality and solid fact meant more to him than they did to Ned.
The smith, mercifully, was kind. It had been too late to finish repairs on Saturday; they must wait over till Monday.
So, in a blissful state of relief, they sat on the bridge parapet again and watched the country folk come in to chapel.
"The Calvinists take the cake in dress," remarked Ned. "Half the big drapery shops in Blackborough belong to them, I'm told, and they give a percentage to their assistants. So I expect Miss--what's her name?--Jones is responsible for half the hats here. Ye gods! what a superstructure for one soul!" As he spoke he watched a carrotty-haired girl with a brick-red burnt face, who wore, both inside and outside a leghorn hat, a wreath of crushed roses shaded from beetroot to carrots.
"Myfanwy," said Ted lightly, "is equal to the burden. Here she comes with the parson, and Miss Alicia has the beauty-boy Mervyn. How happy could both be with either--I wonder how they grow those curls."
He spoke with lazy scorn; but by and by the sound of part-singing instinct with swing and go roused him, for he had sung in a choir all his life, and, after vainly trying to persuade Ned to accompany him, he went off to listen, leaving the latter stretched out full length on the parapet watching for invisible trout.
After a time, however, the old churchyard in its turn attracted Ned's lazy interest, and he strolled off to examine the tombstones. They stood cheek by jowl, and to judge by the dates on many, must represent a perfect battlefield of dead, if all the parish came thither to rest. Some lettering over a low round arch of a sunk door in the church arrested him. Fourteen hundred and fifty-two! No wonder the place looked ruinous, and that he had to step down into the porch! Here his eye took in various framed regulations in red and black, signed "Gawain Meredith, Rector." Evidently the Reverend Gawain was high. And was that a smell of incense?
He set aside the curtain, and stood under the organ-loft. Here surprise held him motionless. Everything was so new, so gilded, so flawless. There was a blaze of red and white on the altar, before which a tall figure in red and white attended by two acolytes, knelt reading the ante-communion service. From them, scattered sparsely over regulation oak benches, was a surpliced choir, four boys on either side coming down, as it were, to meet a huge brass lectern and a red embroidered faldstool.
But the congregation? Six or seven may be in dark corners, or rather since some one must play the organ, eight! No! for the celebrant, after giving out a hymn, strode to a harmonium close to the pulpit, and thereinafter, upborne by his strong baritone, a long-drawn sacramental chant wavered in the aisles, and died away in the rafters of the roof.