The young Delmers slept. They always did. They mostly ought not to have been born at all; they were, except Ivy, who was moderately intelligent, below standard. They slept the sleep of the unthinking.
The vicarage girl slept. She would sleep for some time, because her alarum clock was smothered by a cushion; which would seem to indicate more brains on her part than were to be found in the other inmates of the vicarage.
So Little Chantreys slept, and the world slept, governments and governed, forces of darkness and forces of light, industry and idleness, the sad and the gay; pathetic, untutored children of the moment looking neither behind nor ahead.
The morning light, opening dimly, like a faintly-tinted flower, illumined the large red type of the poster in the Little Chantreys market place. "IMPROVE YOUR BRAINS!" So Brains Sunday dawned upon a world which did indeed seem to need it.
CHAPTER III
BRAINS SUNDAY
1
Ivy Delmer had been right in her premonition. The End House was in church, at matins (the form of Sunday midday worship still used in Little Chantreys, which was old-fashioned). Ivy looked at them as they sat in a row near the front. Mr. Anthony Grammont and Miss Ponsonby sat next each other and conversed together in whispers. Miss Ponsonby was attired in pink gingham, and not much of it (it was not the fashion to have extensive clothes, or of rich materials, lest people should point at you as a profiteer who had made money out of the war; even if you had done this you hid it as far as was convenient, and what you did not hide you said was interest on war loan). Miss Ponsonby, with her serene smile, looked patient, resigned, and very sweet and good. Next her was Miss Grammont, who looked demure in a dress of motley, and, beyond her again, Mr. Prideaux, who looked restless and impatient, either as if he were thinking out some departmental tangle, or as if he thought it had been a silly idea to come to church, or both. At the end of the row were Mr. Amherst, who was studying the church, the congregation and the service through his glasses, collecting copy for his essay, and Mr. Cyril Grammont, who looked like a Roman Catholic attending a Protestant church by special dispensation. (This look cannot be defined, but is known if seen.)
Ivy looked from the End House to her father, surpliced at the lectern, reading the Proper Lesson appointed for Brains Sunday, Proverbs 8 and 9. "Shall not wisdom cry, and understanding put forth her word? She standeth in the top of high places, by the way, in the places of the paths. She crieth at the gates, at the entry of the city, at the coming in at the doors.... O ye simple, understand wisdom, and, ye fools, be of an understanding heart.... Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars" (that was the Ministry hotel, thought Ivy).... "She hath sent forth her maidens, she crieth upon the highest place of the city" (on the walls of the Little Chantreys town hall). "Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither.... Forsake the foolish and live, and go in the way of understanding.... Give instruction to a wise man and he will get wiser; teach a just man and he will increase in learning.... The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding...." Which set Ivy Delmer wondering a little, for she believed her parents to be holy, or anyhow very, very good, and yet.... But perhaps they had, after all, the beginning of wisdom, only not its middle, nor its end, if wisdom has any end. She looked from her father, carefully closing the big Bible and remarking that here ended the first lesson, to her mother, carefully closing her little Bible (for she was of those who follow lessons in books); her mother, who was so wonderfully good and kind and selfless, and to whom old age must come, and who ought to be preparing for it by going in for the Government Mind Training Course, but who said she hadn't time, she was so busy in the house and garden and parish. And half the things she did or supervised in the house and garden ought, said the Ministry of Brains, to be done by machinery, or co-operation, or something. They would have been done better so, and would have left the Delmers and their parishioners more time. More time for what, was the further question? "Save time now spent on the mere business of living, and spend it on better things," said the Ministry pamphlets. Reading, Ivy supposed; thinking, talking, getting au fait with the affairs of the world. And here was Mrs. Delmer teaching each new girl to make pastry (no new girl at the vicarage ever seemed to have acquired the pastry art to Mrs. Delmer's satisfaction in her pre-vicarage career)—pastry, which should have been turned out by the yard in a pastry machine; and spudding up weeds one by one, which should have been electrocuted, like superfluous hairs, or flung up by dynamite, like fish in a river.... But when Mrs. Delmer heard of such new and intelligent labour-saving devices, she was as reluctant to adopt them as any of the poor dear stupid women in the cottages. It was a pity, because the Church should lead the way; and really now that it had been set free of the State it quite often did.