etter than the way Miss Grace 'ad it, Mum. In
their jackets, Mum, very well. Certainly. That would be better."

"I think you'd better just give us what seems easiest for dinner,
Cook," said Maggie, thereby handing herself over, delivered and bound.

"Very well, Mum--I'm sure I'll do my best," said Alice.

Early on that first afternoon she was taken to see the Church. For a
desperate moment her spirits failed her as she stood at the end of the
Lane and looked. This was a Church of the newest red brick, and every
seat was of the most shining wood. The East End window was flaming
purple, with a crimson Christ ascending and yellow and blue disciples
amazed together on the ground. Paul stood flushed with pride and
pleasure, his hand through Maggie's arm.

"That's a Partright window," he said with that inflection that Maggie
was already beginning to think of as "his public voice."

"I'm afraid, Paul dear," said Maggie, "I'm very ignorant."

"Don't know Partright? Oh, he's the great man of the last thirty
years--did the great East window of St. Martin's, Pontefract. We had a
job to get him I can tell you. Just look at that purple."

"On the right you'll see the Memorial Tablet to our brave lads who fell
in the South African War--Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori--very
appropriate. Brave fellows, brave fellows! Just behind you, Maggie, is
the Mickleham Font, one of the finest specimens of modern stone-work in
the county--given to us by Sir Joseph Mickleham--Mickleham Hall, you
know, only two miles from here. He used to attend morning service here
frequently. Died five years ago. Fine piece of work!"

Maggie looked at it. It was enormous, a huge battlement of a font in
dead white stone with wreaths of carved ivy creeping about it.

"It makes one feel rather shivery," said Maggie.

"Now you must see our lectern," said Paul eagerly.

And so it continued. There was apparently a great deal to be said about
the Lectern, and then about the Choir-Screen, and then about the
Reredos, and then about the Pulpit, and then about the Vestry, and then
about the Collecting-Box for the Poor, and then about the Hassocks, and
finally about the Graveyard ... To all this Maggie listened and hoped
that she made the proper answers, but the truth of the matter was that
she was cold and dismayed. The Chapel had been ugly enough, but behind
its ugliness there had been life; now with the Church as with the house
there was no life visible. Pa