So the women and children sang inside, accompanied by a wheezy melodeon. They heightened the effect by emphasizing the adjectives strongly and singing "sollum" with great unanimity in the last line.
Andrew listened for Judith's voice, but evidently she had concluded not to sing. Andrew was disappointed. He had been looking forward in high glee to watching the amazement of his neighbours when they heard that marvellous voice. The truth was, Judith had not seen him where he stood beside the church, and was too busy looking about surreptitiously to see if he had fulfilled his promise about coming, to think of the singing either one way or the other. And when she saw Miss Myers sitting stiffly alone in the corner of a pew near the front, her heart sank like lead, and all her happy eagerness over the service departed. She was piqued, too, and began to feel a nasty heartache stirring within her breast.
The singing was over. An interspace of quiet betokened to those outside that the prayer was in progress, and a rustling of leaves and settling of dresses proclaimed the fact that the preacher and his congregation wore ready for the serious business of the day, the proceedings up to this point being tacitly regarded as the preliminary canter before the weekly contest with Original Sin, that dark horse which, ridden by that knowing jockey, Opportunity, wins so many races for the Evil One. At this juncture the men came in one by one, each trying to look as uninterested in his neighbours as possible, to give the impression that this influx of the male element was purely accidental and not the result of concerted movement.
It is somewhat doubtful if this impression was conveyed to the preacher, as the same circumstance had occurred every Sunday since he had been there; and certainly it deluded none of the women, who, well aware of the gossiping tendencies of their men, never held themselves at the approved "attention" attitude till this stage in the proceedings, but who then waxed marvellously stiff as to posture, and marvellously meek as to expression.
When Judith looked up next time, it was to meet two eager, grey eyes looking at her from Miss Myers' pew, and all at once the incipient heartache vanished, a calm of sweet content fell upon her spirit. She looked around, and apprehended all the poignant blending of pathos and absurdity about her. Her eyes softened as they fell upon old Sam Symmons' hard-wrought hands resting on the top of his stout stick, and lighted as she saw Tommy Slick's rose and white face and impish eyes showing above the door of a centre pew. Her tender eyes sought out and read the story of the deep-lined faces about her, and a great pity for their narrow lives filled her.
The sermon was just begun when the green baize door swung back a little, and an investigating dog entered. He was one of those nosing, prying, peering dogs which seem to typify so exactly the attitude of some people towards their neighbours' affairs. He peregrinated through the pews, around the melodeon, up and down the aisle, and then turned his canine attention to the preacher's reading desk. The preacher became manifestly uneasy; all his sensitiveness slowly centred in his heels, round which the dog sniffed. Judith, whose sense of the humorous was painfully acute, gave one glance at Andrew, and then became absorbed in trying to control her laughter. The dog still lingered where he was. The preacher's face was flushed; his words faltered. Every one felt that some one else should do something.
At length, after many significant gestures and nudges from his wife, Hiram Green rose and approached the dog with outstretched hand, rubbing his fingers together in the manner which we imagine impresses a dumb animal with a deep sense of pacific intentions. The dog backed away. Hiram followed as the dog retreated. It paused, wagging its tail doubtfully. Hiram sat down on his toes and patted his knee in a wheedling manner with one hand, whilst with the other he made ready to grasp his prey. The dog came a little nearer.
Hiram grasped—but grasped short; his fingers met on empty air, and he nearly overbalanced. For the moment he had the wild feeling a person experiences when a rocking-chair goes over with him—a sort of gasping clutch at terra firma.
Judith was nearly in tears from agonies of suppressed laughter, knowing, as she did, that Andrew was waiting to catch her eye. That, she felt, would finish matters so far as she was concerned; a sense of companionship makes one's appreciation of a joke painfully intense.
Hiram was conscious that the Sunday School in the gallery was red with suppressed excitement; that his neighbours' interest in the sermon was purely perfunctory; he even had a horrible thought that the preacher himself was laughing at him. In this he was wrong; the preacher was nearly distracted, having lost the thread of his sermon, and was maundering wildly on, hoping to disentangle his argument before Hiram caught the dog.