im skipped and ran, to keep step with him, a little man in
ill-fitting black, of whose appearance, thus viewed from the rear, one
could only observe stooping shoulders and iron-gray hair that curled at
the ends.

"He must be the poor missionary who built his church himself," Mrs.
Lossing observed; "he is not much of a preacher, the dean said, but he
is a great worker and a good pastor."

"So much the better for his people, and the worse for us!" says Harry,
cheerfully.

"Why?"

"Naturally. We shall get the poor sermon and they will get the good
pastoring!"

Then Harry caught sight of a woman's frock and a profile that he knew,
and thought no more of the preacher, whoever he might be.

But he was in the chancel in plain view, after the procession of
choir-boys had taken their seats. He was an elderly man with thin
cheeks and a large nose. He had one of those great, orotund voices that
occasionally roll out of little men, and he read the service with a
misjudged effort to fill the building. The building happened to have
peculiarly fine acoustic properties; but the unfortunate man roared like
him of Bashan. There was nothing of the customary ecclesiastical dignity
and monotony about his articulation; indeed, it grew plain and plainer
to Harry that he must have "come over" from some franker and more
emotional denomination. It seemed quite out of keeping with his homely
manner and crumpled surplice that this particular reader should intone.
Intone, nevertheless, he did; and as badly as mortal man well could! It
was not so much that his voice or his ear went wrong; he would have had
a musical voice of the heavy sort, had he not bellowed; neither did his
ear betray him; the trouble seemed to be that he could not decide when
to begin; now he began too early, and again, with a startled air, he
began too late, as if he had forgotten.

"I hope he will not preach," thought Harry, who was absorbed in a rapt
contemplation of his sweetheart's back hair. He came back from a tender
revery (by way of a little detour into the furniture business and the
establishment that a man of his income could afford) to the church and
the preacher and his own sins, to find the strange clergyman in the
pulpit, plainly frightened, and bawling more loudly than ever under the
influence of fear. He preached a sermon of wearisome platitudes; making
up for lack of thought by repetition, and shouting himself red in the
face to express earnestness. "F