nse of dignity always to
circularize the applicants.

This document, harmless enough, and surely a proof of laudable
aspirations in Louis, gravely displeased the different, inimical
Rachel, and was used by her for bellicose purposes.

"So that's it, is it?" she said ominously.

"But wasn't it understood that we were to go to the Old Church?" said
the other Louis, full of ingenious innocence.

"Oh! Was it?"

"Didn't I mention it?"

"I don't remember."

"I'm sure I did."

The truth was that Louis had once casually remarked that he supposed
they would attend the Old Church. Rachel would have joyously attended
any church or any chapel with him. At Knype she had irregularly
attended the Bethesda Chapel--sometimes (in the evenings) with her
father, oftener alone, never with her brother. During her brief
employment with Mrs. Maldon she had been only once to a place of
worship, the new chapel in Moorthorne Road, which was the nearest to
Bycars and had therefore been favoured by Mrs. Maldon when her
limbs were stiff. In the abstract she approved of religious rites.
Theologically her ignorance was such that she could not have
distinguished between the tenets of church and the tenets of chapel,
and this ignorance she shared with the large majority of the serious
inhabitants of the Five Towns. Why, then, should she have "pulled a
face" (as the saying down there is) at the Old Parish Church?

One reason, which would have applied equally to church or chapel, was
that she was disconcerted and even alarmed by Louis' manifest tendency
to settle down into utter correctness. Louis had hitherto been a
devotee of joy--never as a bachelor had he done aught to increase the
labour of churchwardens--and it was somehow as a devotee of joy that
Rachel had married him. Rachel had been settled down all her life, and
naturally desired and expected that an unsettling process should now
occur in her career. It seemed to her that in mere decency Louis
might have allowed at any rate a year or two to pass before occupying
himself so stringently with her eternal welfare. She belonged to the
middle class (intermediate between the industrial and the aristocratic
employing) which is responsible for the Five Towns' reputation for
joylessness, the class which sticks its chin out and gets things done
(however queer the things done may be), the class which keeps the
district together and maintains its solidity, the class which is
ashamed of nothing