Butter Scotch.
These, evidently, related to some rabbiting expedition, planned possibly during a dull sermon.
The little church was full of mural tablets and such memorials of the departed. In the windows were achievements. Here the Pomfrets had worshipped for centuries; here they were laid to rest.
Would she lie down amongst them?
The choir-boys sang lustily the Venite. In the nave, occupying two front seats, stood the girls, under the charge of Joyce. They sang better than the boys.
She saw Moxon further down the nave, standing by himself, gravely impassive. Did he want to sweep away this? It was hardly possible that he could be a Churchman. Margot herself accepted the Church of England as an institution which lent power and prestige to her order. It served admirably the purposes to which, designedly, it had been warped. It sustained authority and discipline. It stimulated loyalty. It enjoined those of low degree to rest content in the station assigned to them by an All-Wise and Loving Providence. Strictly speaking, it had become political—Church and State, an ideal partnership. Just so a Grandee of Spain accepts and reveres his Holy Mother Church, which, admittedly, is better organised and equipped.
Hamlin put to flight these thoughts when he read the Second Lesson.
His personality gripped her attention. He positively forced her to listen. Presently he would preach. Would the presence of Moxon, himself an instructor, a Dominie, and a man of advanced views, influence the Parson in his selection of a theme?
At the end of the Lesson, during the singing of the canticle, she noticed that the Squire was “ticking off” the congregation, making notes of absentees. Woe betide them if no reasonable excuse were proffered! He might well congratulate himself upon his people. The farmers and their families were conspicuous. Behind them sat the labourers, bovine, ruddy, with well-lined stomachs. The Pomfret servants filled two pews. Since the exposition of eugenics in Fishpingle’s room, Alfred had deemed it discreet not to sing out of the same hymn-book with Prudence. He sat with the under-servants, but wisely apart from the stillroom maid.
Everybody looked smugly pious and respectable.