“Myra,” she called out. A girl came downstairs with some pocket-handkerchiefs in her hand which she appeared to be marking in red. There was a hurried whisper in a back room, and quickly she brought in a glass of milk and some bread and butter—for which I was truly thankful.
“The lady do look wisht,” my companion explained to the girl. “She’s walked from Woodacres to hear the minister from London. She lost her way, and so didn’t get in time for the tea-meeting.”
I was interested in this item of information about myself, but decided to let the unexpected situation develop as it pleased.
We were soon walking along the road again, my companion talking the whole time. Myra was her niece, going to Bristol next week to start in a draper’s shop. “She says ’tisn’t stylish nowadays to let folks think as you does your washing yourself, so she’s making sort o’ red oughts and crosses in the corner, that the other girls ’ll think as the washin’ was put out. Put out, indeed!”—with utter scorn of voice—“‘Isn’t it all put out?’ I asks her. How could they dry ’un else? I’ve no patience with such fangels—that I haven’t! And isn’t this war dreadful? I see in the paper I was a-readin’ to father that that Kayser do call it a righteous war. A righteous war—when he don’t even leave off a-fighting of a Sunday!”
Just then we turned a corner, and the maligned chapel certainly burst into view “all to once.”
The first thing to attract attention, as we neared the modest building, was a large board above the front entrance, displaying the words “Revival Meetings” in bold white letters pasted on a red turkey twill background.
A hymn was progressing when we entered; a seat had been reserved for the cottager by her husband, and had been left in charge of his hat (turned upside down and holding a red pocket-handkerchief covered with large white spots), while he himself distributed hymn books with backs all suffering from spinal complaint in a more or less acute form.
By dint of energetic compression on the part of the good-natured occupants of the pew, room was made for me as well as for my companion, the owner of the hat electing to stand in the aisle, as became a pillar of the church; the conspicuous crease adorning each trouser-leg and the back of his black coat proclaimed them his best clothes, and gave additional evidence that the meeting was of more than ordinary weekday importance.
The place was packed to its utmost capacity. I decided that I had never in my whole life heard a harmonium more asthmatically out of tune and at the same time I wished that the lamps (which were economically turned down, daylight being still visible) could only be raised, since the odour of paraffin was not a refreshing ingredient to add to the air of the already close room. For on our hills, as in other places where fresh air is most abundant, ventilation is the least among the virtues practised by the natives.