“What is it?” I cried.
“It’s what I’ve chiefly come in for,” said she. “I want some to lay out. It’s a water-weed; a fresh-water alga, you know, like seaweed, only a fresh-water plant. I’m looking for the stone it grew near. Oh, that’s it you’re on! Climb up on to it out of the way, Margery dear. It’s rather a rare kind of weed, and I don’t want it to be spoiled. Call the dogs, please. Oh, look at all the bits they’ve broken off!”
Eleanor dodged and darted to catch certain fragments of dark-looking stuff that were being whirled away. With much difficulty she caught two or three, and laid one of them in my hand. But I was not prepared for the fact that it felt like a bit of jelly, and it slipped through my fingers before I had time to examine the beauty of the jointed branches pointed out by Eleanor, and in a moment more it was hopelessly lost. We put what we had got into some dock-leaves for safety, and having waded back to our stockings, we put on our hats and walked barefoot for a few yards through the heather, to dry our feet, after which we resumed our boots and stockings and set off homewards.
“We’ll go by the lower road,” said Eleanor, “and look at the church.”
For some time after Eleanor had passed in through the rickety gates of the south porch, I lingered amongst the gravestones, reading their quaint inscriptions. Quaint both in matter and in the manner of rhyme and spelling. As I also drew towards the porch, I looked up to see if I could tell the time by the dial above it. I could not, nor (in spite of my brief learning in Dr. Russell’s grammar) could I interpret the Latin motto, “Fugit Hora. Ora”—“The hour flies. Pray.”
As I came slowly and softly up the aisle, I fancied Eleanor was kneeling, but a strange British shame of prayer made her start to her feet and kept me from kneeling also; though the peculiar peace and devout solemnity which seemed to be the very breath of that ancient House of God made me long to do something more expressive of my feelings than stand and stare.
There was no handsome church at Riflebury; the one the Bullers “attended” when we were at the seaside was new, and not beautiful. The one Miss Mulberry took us to was older, but uglier. I had never seen one of these old parish churches. This cathedral among the moors, with its massive masonry, its dark oak carving, its fragments of gorgeous glass, its ghostly hatchments and banners, and its aisles paved with the tombstones of the dead, was a new revelation.
I was silent awhile in very awe. I think it was a bird beginning to chirp in the roof which made me dare to speak, and then I whispered, “How quiet it is in here, and how cool!”
I had hardly uttered the words when a flash of lightning made me start and cry out. A heavy peal of thunder followed very quickly.
“Don’t be frightened, Margery dear,” said Eleanor; “we have very heavy storms here, and we had better go home. But I am so glad you admire our dear old church. There was one very hot Sunday last summer, when a thunderstorm came on during Evening Prayer. I was sitting in the choir, where I could see the storm through the south transept door, and the great stones in the transept arches. It was so cool in here, and all along I kept thinking of ‘a refuge from the storm, a shadow in the heat,’ and ‘a great rock in a weary land.’”