There was in the vicar's manner the welcoming quality that puts the shyest person at his ease. He was secretly much surprised that young Gallup should call upon him; but no hint of this appeared in his manner, and Eloquent found no difficulty in stating the object of his visit with business-like directness.
"I came to ask you," he remarked with his usual stiff solemnity, "if you would care for me to read the lessons at morning service to-morrow. . . . I do not read badly. . . . I have studied elocution."
The humorous lines round the old vicar's eyes deepened, but he answered with equal gravity, "That is very good of you, and I gratefully accept your kind offer. General Grantly has promised to read the first lesson, but I shall be glad if you will read the second. Will you do both at the afternoon service? There's no evensong on Christmas Day."
This was rather more than Eloquent had bargained for, but . . . she might come to the afternoon service as well. "I shall be most happy," he said meekly, "to do anything I can to assist."
The vicar rang for tea, but Eloquent arose hastily, saying he had promised to have tea with his aunt. He had no desire to prolong the interview with this urbane old gentleman now that its object was achieved. Mr Molyneux saw him to the front door and watched him for a moment as he bustled down the drive. "So that," he said to himself, as he went back to the warm study, "is our future member . . . for everyone says he will get in. Why does he want to read the lessons, I wonder? It will certainly do him no good with his dissenting constituents, and it is they who will get him in—what can his object be?"
The Ffolliot family formed quite a procession as they marched up the aisle on Christmas morning. General and Mrs Grantly were there; Reggie, Mr and Mrs Ffolliot, and the six young Ffolliots. They overflowed into the seat behind, and the Kitten, whom nothing ever awed or subdued, was heard to remark that since she couldn't sit with Willets, the keeper, who always had "such instasting things in his pottets," she'd sit "between the Ganpies." Reggie, Mary, and her four brothers filled the second seat: Mary sat at the far end, and Ger nearest the aisle, that he might gaze entrancedly at his grandfather while he read the lesson. Reggie came next to Ger, and Grantly separated Uz and Buz, so that Eloquent only caught an occasional glimpse of Mary's extremely flat back between the heads of other worshippers.
"Oh come, all ye faithful!" the choir sang lustily as it started in procession round the church, and the faithful responded vigorously. The Kitten pranced on her hassock, and always started the new verse before everyone else in the clearest of pure trebles. The Ffolliot boys shouted, and for once Mr Ffolliot forebore to frown on them. No woman with a houseful of children can remain quite unmoved on Christmas morning during that singularly jubilant invocation, and Mrs Grantly and Margery Ffolliot ceased to sing, for their eyes were full of tears. Mr Ffolliot fixed his monocle more firmly, and bent forward to look at the Kitten, and to catch her little pipe above the shouts of her brothers behind.
The Kitten sang words of her own composition during the Psalms, her grandparents both singing loudly themselves in their efforts not to hear her, for the Kitten's improvisations were enough to upset the gravity of a bench of bishops.
The General read the first lesson in a brisk and business-like monotone, and when he had finished his grandsons applauded noiselessly under the book-board.
The Kitten was very much to the fore during "Praise him and magnify him for ever," and then came the second lesson.