'Peakit-like' means pinched and miserable-looking. It is a north country expression, mums says, for Mrs. Parsley belonged to the north when she was young.
Well, off I set. I hadn't any adventures—that was for afterwards. I found my way quite well, and I enjoyed the walk very much. The church was rather queer. It was very old; there were strange tablets on the walls and monuments in the corners, and part of the pavement was gravestones—the side parts, not the middle. But it was new too. There weren't any pews, and it was all open and airy. But still it had the feeling of being very old. I don't know much about architecture—it's one of the things I mean to learn. I know pews are all wrong, still they're rather fun. At one church near Furzely, where we sometimes go in wet weather, there are some square ones with curtains all round, and the two biggest pews have even fireplaces in them—they're exactly like tiny rooms. I daresay there were pews like that once in Fewforest church, for it certainly is very old.
I stood in front of the chancel some time looking at the high painted window behind the altar; it was very old. I could see it by the cracks here and there where you could tell it had been mended. I couldn't help thinking what lots and lots of people must have looked at that window—at those very figures in it and the patterns round the edge—since it was first put up there. Lots of children as little as me, who grew up to be men and women, and then got old and died. Isn't it queer to think how men and women must die, and that bits of glass that anybody could break with a touch can last on for hundreds of years? I daresay some of the children I was thinking of, the long long ago ones, kept on looking at that window every Sunday, and saints' days too—for people long ago went much oftener to church on saints' days, you know,—all through their lives; for before there were railways, or even coaches, and travelling cost so dear, lots of country people never went farther away than a few miles from their own village at all. It is strange to think of. I thought to myself I'd like to show Anne the church. She'd understand all these feelings it gave me—perhaps she'd make poetry about it. She does make poetry sometimes. I was sure she'd like the church.
But I was afraid of being late for mother, or making her fidgety that I was going to be late, so I turned to go.
Just as I was leaving the church, I saw that there was some one there beside myself. I hadn't noticed her before, but she must have been there all the time. It was a lady. She had been kneeling, but she got up and passed out quickly. I had only time to catch a very little glimpse of her face, but even in that tiny glimpse I felt as if I had seen it before. But I couldn't think where. She didn't see me, I was a little in shadow, and she looked eager and hurried, as if she had plenty to do, and had only run in to say her prayers for a minute.
Where had I seen that rather frowning, eager look in a face before? It did bother me so, but I couldn't remember.
That was a tiny bit of an adventure, after all. I shouldn't have said I hadn't any at all that day.
'I just stood still ... and looked well round at the view and everything.' c. ix. p. 130.