Alice was thinking less of what she should wear than of how she should tell her husband that she had resolved upon going to church. Painful experience had taught her what ridicule and resource of conjugal meanness to expect whenever she found courage to say she meant to go to church. Yet hope, consoling phantom, always suggested that her husband the next time might prove more amenable to reason.
When at last she managed casually to mention her momentous resolve, MacBirney showed that he had lost none of his alertness on the subject. He made use first of surprise to express his annoyance. "To church?" Then he gave vent to a contemptuous exclamation uttered with a semblance of good-natured indifference. "I thought you had got that notion pretty well out of your head, Alice."
"You have got it pretty well out for me, Walter. Sometimes it comes back. It came this morning--after a wakeful night. I haven't been for a long time."
"What church do you want to go to?"
His disingenuousness did not stir her. "To my own, of course. There is a little church in the village, you know."
"Oh, that frame affair, yes. Awfully cheap looking, isn't it? And it threatens rain again. Don't mind getting wet?"
"Oh, no, I'll take the victoria."
"You can't; Peters is going to drive me over to The Towers."
"Then give me one of the cars."
"I understand they are both out of order."