"It's out of course and all irregular like to pray for the Queen and the Royal Family on a day like this. 'Twould be best keep that for Sundays where it belongs," said the wife of the ancient who had spoken first.
"What can ye expect, ma'am, when they come to it without their notes? Stands to reason, if any man's going to preach earnest, earnest, mind you, he'll require some notes or heads jotted down, clear and easy to be got at, before him." This was the opinion of another elderly man, but of a fat and comfortable if blustering variety, who had come out from the English provinces thirty years before as cook with a regiment, and was now the Hawthorne butcher and general store-keeper, also accounted a rich man.
"But that's not the point," he went on with husky and stertorous fervour. "The point is not whether what he said was well said or ill said; the point is, he should never have spoke them words at all. Point? To almost point the finger at us sitting around this hospitable board declaring we were all sinners! So we are, all of us. The Litany says so, don't it? Don't it say, 'miserable sinners'?"
"It does, it does," murmured a sympathetic female engaged in feeding two out of eleven kinds of cake to a child on her lap.
"And the rector leaves it there, where it ought to be left. In my opinion, ma'am, it don't do no good to pray nor preach too direct. It's casting a stone, that's what it is, it's casting a stone."
"Perhaps he was nervous, poor young man, at seeing so many people," said the young mother of the child who was crumbling the cake all over its mouth and fingers and dress without swallowing any, having previously been regaled with maple sugar and molasses candy outside, and consequently not feeling very hungry. "Perhaps he has heard about Angeel."
The latter was the common pronunciation of Angele, the name of the little girl in the basket-chair who was engaged like the rest in eating and drinking in company with her nurse not far from Mr. Abercorn.
At the word "Angeel" several warning coughs around her, winks, nudges and a kick under the table, made the young woman so flurried that she slapped the child for not eating properly, and the child immediately beginning to cry, a diversion was created, but not before Ringfield had overheard a few remarks touching his recent prayer, not exactly flattering to his self-esteem. Soon the conversation lapsed as the piles of cake, custard and pumpkin pies and jugs of tea were depleted; and Mr. Abercorn, upon whom the quiet and gathering gloom had a depressing effect, jumped up and asked for volunteers to assist in lighting the lamps.
"We usually get through without artificial aid to our eyes and our mouths, but that is when the picnic tea is held in October. We are at least a fortnight late this year. We shall want the tall men for this—Jacobs, Enderby, Anselme—you take these three lamps on the other side while I find somebody to help me with mine."
"On the score of height, at least," said Ringfield pleasantly, leaving his seat and striding down the centre of the barn, "I can offer my services. Which are the ones to be lighted? These two and the one just over our heads?"