"Are you thinking of going to church, Aunt Susan?"
Miss Gallup looked surprised.
"Well, no, not if you don't want to come. I generally go, but I'm more than willing to stop with you."
"But I'd like to go," Eloquent asserted, and got very red in the face as he did so. "I don't think I've ever been in the church here."
"Well, there's no chapel as you could go to if you was ever so minded. Old Mr Molyneux mayn't be so active as some, but there's never been no dissent since he was vicar, and that's forty years last Michaelmas."
"What about my father?" Eloquent suggested.
"Your dear father got his dissenting opinions and his politics in
Marlehouse, not here."
"Then I'm afraid I shan't get many votes from this village," said
Eloquent, but he said it cheerfully, as though he didn't care.
"That's for you to see to," Miss Gallup said significantly; "there's no tellin' what a persuasive tongue mayn't do."
As Eloquent walked through the darkness with his aunt, he heard her cheerful voice go rippling on as in a dream. He had no idea what she talked about, his whole mind was concentrated in the question: "Will she be there?"