household who could sing
(singing being construed in the sense of making a loud and cheerful
noise in the throat) clustered in the choir-pews near the organ, while
the family sat in a large, square box, with a stove in the centre, amply
supplied with prayer-books of the time when even Protestants might pray
for Queen Caroline. Behind them, separated from the rest of the church
by an ornamental ironwork grille, was the Comber chapel, in which
antiquarians took nearly as much pleasure as Lord Ashbridge himself.
Here reclined a glorious company of sixteenth century knights, with
their honourable ladies at their sides, unyielding marble bolsters at
their heads, and grotesque dogs at their feet. Later, when their peerage
was conferred, they lost a little of their yeoman simplicity, and became
peruked and robed and breeched; one, indeed, in the age of George III.,
who was blessed with poetical aspirations, appeared in bare feet and a
Roman toga with a scroll of manuscript in his hand; while later again,
mere tablets on the walls commemorated their almost uncanny virtues.

And just on the other side of the grille, but a step away, sat the
present-day representatives of the line, while Lady Ashbridge finished
the last bars of her voluntary, Lord Ashbridge himself and his sister,
large and smart and comely, and Michael beside them, short and heavy,
with his soul full of the aspirations his father neither could nor cared
to understand. According to his invariable custom, Lord Ashbridge read
the lessons in a loud, sonorous voice, his large, white hands grasping
the wing-feathers of the brass eagle, and a great carnation in his
buttonhole; and when the time came for the offertory he put a sovereign
in the open plate himself, and proceeded with his minuet-like step to go
round the church and collect the gifts of the encouraged congregation.
He followed all the prayers in his book, he made the responses in a
voice nearly as loud as that in which he read the lessons; he sang the
hymns with a curious buzzing sound, and never for a moment did he lose
sight of the fact that he was the head of the Comber family, doing his
duty as the custom of the Combers was, and setting an example of godly
piety. Afterwards, as usual, he would change his black coat, eat a good
lunch, stroll round the gardens (for he had nothing to say to golf on
Sunday), and in the evening the clergyman would dine with him, and
would be requested to say grace both befor