Ah! red cloth comes but once in a
lifetime. It is only the queen who lives in an atmosphere of red cloth
and cut flowers.
We are in church now. The service is in progress. Can it be only _five_
Sundays ago that I was standing here as I am now, watching all the
little well-known incidents? Father standing up in frock-coat and
spectacles, keeping a sharp lookout over the top of his prayer-book, to
see _how_ late the servants are. The ill-behaved charity-boys emulously
trying who shall make the hind-legs of his chair squeak the loudest on
the stone floor. Toothless Jack leering distantly at Barbara from the
side aisle. Something apparently is amusing him. He is smiling a little.
I see his teeth. They, at least, are new. _They_ were not here five
weeks ago. The little starved curate--the one who tore his gloves into
strips--loses his place in the second lesson, and madly plunges at three
different wrong verses in succession, before he regains the thread of
his narrative.
We have come to the sermon. The text is, "I have married a wife, and
therefore I cannot come.
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