'This is most unfortunate. I can hardly ask Mrs Beste-Chetwynde to stop smoking. Frankly I regard this as impertinence.
'But no man can you ask against his Maker to blaspheme whatever unless him to pay more you were. Three pounds for the music is good and one for blasphemy look you.
Dr Fagan gave him another pound. The stationmaster retired, and in a few minutes the silver band began a singularly emotional rendering of In Thy courts no more are needed Sun by day and Moon by night.
CHAPTER X Post Mortem
As the last car drove away the Doctor and his daughters and Paul and Grimes walked up the drive together towards the Castle.
'Frankly the day has been rather a disappointment to me, said the Doctor. 'Nothing seemed to go quite right in spite of all our preparations.
'And expense, said Dingy.
'I am sorry, too, that Mr Prendergast should have had that unfortunate disagreement with Mrs Beste‑Chetwynde's coloured friend. In all the ten years during which we have worked together I have never known Mr Prendergast so self‑assertive. It was not becoming of him. Nor was it Philbrick's place to join in. I was seriously alarmed. They seemed so angry, and all about some minor point of ecclesiastical architecture.
'Mr Cholmondley was very sensitive, said Flossie.
'Yes, he seemed to think that Mr Prendergast's insistence on the late development of the rood‑screen was in some way connected with colour‑prejudice. I wonder why that was? To my mind it showed a very confused line of thought. Still, it would have been more seemly if Mr Prendergast had let the matter drop, and what could Philbrick know of the matter?