“What, looking at our church, ha! It looks well, by moonlight; how the tin of the cupola glistens! I warrant you the dome of the other St. Paul's never shines so in the smoke of London.”
“It is a pretty meeting-house to look on,” returned Hiram, “and I believe that Monshure Ler Quow and Mr. Penguilliam will allow it.”
“Sairtainlee!” exclaimed the complaisant Frenchman, “it ees ver fine.”
“I thought the monshure would say so. The last molasses that we had was excellent good. It isn't likely that you have any more of it on hand?”
“Ah! oui; ees, sair,” returned Monsieur Le Quoi, with a slight shrug of his shoulder, and a trifling grimace, “dere is more. I feel ver happi dat you love eet. I hope dat Madame Doleet' is in good 'ealth.”
“Why, so as to be stirring,” said Hiram. “The squire hasn't finished the plans for the inside of the meeting house yet?”
“No—no—no,” returned Richard, speaking quickly, but making a significant pause between each negative—.. “it requires reflection. There is a great deal of room to fill up, and I am afraid we shall not know how to dispose of it to advantage. There will be a large vacant spot around the pulpit, which I do not mean to place against the wall, like a sentry-box stuck up on the side of a fort.”
“It is ruleable to put the deacons' box under the pulpit,” said Hiram; and then, as if he had ventured too much, he added, “but there's different fashions in different Countries.”
“That there is,” cried Benjamin; “now, in running down the coast of Spain and Portingall, you may see a nunnery stuck out on every headland, with more steeples and outriggers such as dog-vanes and weathercocks, than you'll find aboard of a three-masted schooner. If so be that a well-built church is wanting, old England, after all, is the country to go to after your models and fashion pieces. As to Paul's, thof I've never seen it, being that it's a long way up town from Radcliffe Highway and the docks, yet everybody knows that it's the grandest place in the world Now, I've no opinion but this here church over there is as like one end of it as a grampus is to a whale; and that's only a small difference in bulk. Mounsheer Ler Quaw, here, has been in foreign parts; and thof that is not the same as having been at home, yet he must have seen churches in France too, and can form a small idee of what a church should be; now I ask the mounsheer to his face if it is not a clever little thing, taking it by and large.”
“It ees ver apropos of saircumstance,” said the Frenchman—“ver judgment—but it is in the catholique country dat dey build de—vat you call—ah a ah-ha—la grande cathédrale—de big church. St. Paul, Londre, is ver fine; ver belle; ver grand—vat you call beeg; but, Monsieur Ben, pardonnez-moi, it is no vort so much as Notre Dame.”