r, placed as he had placed the rosebuds. A splendor leaped into her
eyes, but her cheek did not redden; it was to his face that the color
rushed. They had but a moment in which to gaze at each other, for the
singing, which to her, at least, had seemed suddenly to swell into a great
ascending tide of sound, with somewhere, far away, the silver calling of a
trumpet, now came to an end, and with another silken rustle and murmur
the congregation sat down.

Haward did not turn again, and the service went drowsily on. Darden was
bleared of eye and somewhat thick of voice; the clerk's whine was as
sleepy a sound as the buzzing of the bees in and out of window, or the
soft, incessant stir of painted fans. A churchwarden in the next pew
nodded and nodded, until he nodded his peruke awry, and a child went fast
asleep, with its head in its mother's lap. One and all worshiped somewhat
languidly, with frequent glances at the hourglass upon the pulpit. They
prayed for King George the First, not knowing that he was dead, and for
the Prince, not knowing that he was King. The minister preached against
Quakers and witchcraft, and shook the rafters with his fulminations.
Finally came the benediction and a sigh of relief.

In that country and time there was no unsociable and undignified scurrying
homeward after church. Decorous silence prevailed until the house was
exchanged for the green and shady churchyard: but then tongues were
loosened, and the flower-bed broken into clusters. One must greet one's
neighbors; present or be presented to what company might be staying at the
various great houses within the parish; talk, laugh, coquet, and ogle;
make appointments for business or for pleasure; speak of the last
horse-race, the condition of wheat and tobacco, and the news brought in by
the Valour, man-of-war, that the King was gone to Hanover. In short, for
the nonce, the churchyard became a drawing-room, with the sun for candles,
with no painted images of the past and gone upon the walls, but with the
dead themselves beneath the floor.

The minister, having questions to settle with clerk and sexton, tarried
in the vestry room; but his wife, with Audrey and the schoolmaster, waited
for him outside, in the shade of an oak-tree that was just without the
pale of the drawing-room. Mistress Deborah, in her tarnished amber satin
and ribbons that had outworn their youth, bit her lip and tapped her foot
upon the ground. Audrey watched her apprehens