"But I am doubly in the wrong, for I told you Tim would not let you touch him, and he was as a lamb in your hands," went on Betty, still put out.
"But that is something I was born with: that is no credit to me. I love all animals, and I think they know it."
They were through the bush now and trotting gaily along the road to Rumney, passing groups of people from the various farms, all bent in the same direction.
"Everyone comes," said Betty, "on an occasion of this kind. Roman Catholics and every denomination that calls itself Christian."
"That seems to me rather beautiful. Ah! there is the Bishop waiting by the foot of the hill with quite a cluster of people about him."
"I'll let you down with your bag and drive on to the inn, and put up Tim," said Betty, and Tom tactfully made no offer to do it for her.
Very soon she was wending her way, with many others, to the new little church built on the side of a hill just beyond the township in a clearing in the bush. There was no fence round it, no properly-made path to lead up to it, but there was a nameless charm in the primitive simplicity of it all, and Betty went in and thanked God that at last the church, so long in hand, was completed.
There was a pretty little altar with a wooden cross and vases of fresh flowers on either side of it, a prayer desk, which at present had to serve as lectern desk, and pulpit, and a very simple font, but benches had had to be borrowed from the school-house hard by. It was hoped that the offerings of the day might help to provide some new ones. But Betty's attention was arrested by the sound of singing, and glancing through the open door of the porch, she saw a little procession of clergy winding its way up the hill towards the church, the Bishop bringing up the rear.
"The Church's one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord——"
so the words rang—at first only sung by the clergy, but as they neared the door the congregation rose as one man to their feet, and the well-known hymn was taken up lustily until the little building was filled with the volume of sound.