and with
avidity each and all turn over the leaves of their Bibles, to see if it
be really in the identical spot mentioned, or whether their pastor has
been lying. This action may not be altogether suspicion; it may be also
thought of as a safety-valve for their _ennui_, the rector never
letting them off until they have had sixty good minutes of his valuable
doctrine.

All the Herst party conduct themselves with due discretion save Mr.
Potts, who, being overcome by the novelty of the situation and the
length of the sermon, falls fast asleep, and presently, at some
denunciatory passage, pronounced in a rather distinct tone by the
rector, rousing himself with a precipitate jerk, sends all the
fire-irons with a fine clatter to the ground, he having been most
unhappily placed nearest the grate.

"The ruling passion strong in death," says Luttrell, with a despairing
glance at the culprit; whereupon Molly nearly laughs outright, while
the school-children do so quite.

Beyond this small _contre-temps_, however, nothing of note occurs;
and, service being over, they all file decorously out of the church
into the picturesque porch outside, where they stand for a few minutes
interchanging greetings with such of the county families as come within
their knowledge.

With a few others too, who scarcely come within that aristocratic pale,
notably Mrs. Buscarlet. She is a tremendously stout, distressingly
healthy woman, quite capable of putting her husband in a corner of her
capacious pocket, which, by the bye, she insists on wearing outside her
gown, in a fashion beloved of our great-grandmothers, and which, in a
modified form, last year was much affected by our own generation.

This alarming personage greets Marcia with the utmost _bonhommie_,
being apparently blind to the coldness of her reception. She greets
Lady Stafford also, who is likewise at freezing-point, and then gets
introduced to Molly. Mrs. Darley, who even to the uninitiated Mrs.
Buscarlet appears a person unworthy of notice, she lets go free, for
which favor Mrs. Darley is devoutly grateful.

Little Buscarlet himself, who has a weakness for birth, in that he
lacks it, comes rambling up to them at this juncture, and tells them,
with many a smirk, he hopes to have the pleasure of lunching with them
at Herst, Mr. Amherst having sent him a special invitation, as he has
something particular to say to him; whereupon Molly, who is nearest to
him, laughs, and tells him