ce was
mingled in the folds of her glove. In her haste to get it out,
it flipped away and went twinkling in the next pew. She stood
and giggled. She could not help it: she laughed outright, a
figure of shame.

"What were you laughing about, our Anna?" asked Fred, the
moment they were out of the church.

"Oh, I couldn't help it," she said, in her careless,
half-mocking fashion. "I don't know why Cousin Will's
singing set me off."

"What was there in my singing to make you laugh?" he
asked.

"It was so loud," she said.

They did not look at each other, but they both laughed again,
both reddening.

"What were you snorting and laughing for, our Anna?" asked
Tom, the elder brother, at the dinner table, his hazel eyes
bright with joy. "Everybody stopped to look at you." Tom was in
the choir.

She was aware of Will's eyes shining steadily upon her,
waiting for her to speak.

"It was Cousin Will's singing," she said.

At which her cousin burst into a suppressed, chuckling laugh,
suddenly showing all his small, regular, rather sharp teeth, and
just as quickly closing his mouth again.

"Has he got such a remarkable voice on him then?" asked
Brangwen.

"No, it's not that," said Anna. "Only it tickled me--I
couldn't tell you why."

And again a ripple of laughter went down the table.

Will Brangwen thrust forward his dark face, his eyes dancing,
and said:

"I'm in the choir of St. Nicholas."

"Oh, you go to church then!" said Brangwen.

"Mother does--father doesn't," replied the youth.

It was the little things, his movement, the funny tones of
his voice, that showed up big to Anna. The matter-of-fact things
he said were absurd in contrast. The things her father said
seemed meaningless and neutral.

During the afternoon they sat in the parlour, that smelled of
geranium, and they ate cherries, and talked. Will Brangwen was
called on to give himself forth. And soon he was drawn out.

He was interested in churches, in church architecture. The
influence of Ruskin had stimulated him to a pleasure in the
medieval forms. His talk was fragmentary, he was only half
articulate. But listening to him, as he spoke of church after
church, of nave and chancel and transept, of rood-screen and
font, of hatchet-carving and moulding and tracery, speaking
always with close passion of particular things, particular
places, there gathered in her heart a pregnant hush of churches,
a mystery, a ponderous significance of bowed