“Perhaps he likes the service better,” said Mary, who during this discussion had been trying to write a letter and now gave up the effort in despair.
“Oh, I daresay he does—he’s young and excitable.”
“There’s nothing very exciting at Vinehall,” said George—“I don’t think Luce has even a surpliced choir these days.”
“Well, there’s incense and chasubles and all that—Gervase always did like things that are different.”
“I must say,” said Mary, who was perhaps a little irritated at having nowhere to write her letter (the Raw Girl being in devastating possession of her bedroom)—“I must say that if I had any religion myself, I’d like a religion which at least was religion and not soup.”
“What do you mean?”
Both George and Rose sat up stiffly, and even Peter looked shocked.
“Well, your religion here seems chiefly to consist in giving people soup-tickets and coal-tickets, and having rummage sales. Stella Mount’s religion at least means an attempt at worship, and at least.... Oh, well—” she broke down rather lamely—“anyhow it makes you want something you haven’t got.”
“We can most of us do that without religion,” said Peter, getting up.
Rose looked meaningly after him as he went out of the room, then she looked still more meaningly at her husband—it was as if her eyes and eyebrows were trying to tell him her conviction that Peter was finding life unsatisfactory in spite of Vera and Starvecrow, indeed that he regretted Stella—had he not championed her almost grotesquely just now? ... and he had talked of wanting something he had not got....