were
screened from the gaze of the common worshippers by no curtain, and who,
therefore--maids, middle-aged women, and spruce men-servants--provided a
source of interested rumination when heads were raised above the wooden
partitions, and bonnets, mantles, and broadcloth could be examined, and
perhaps envied, at leisure.

Cicely had played the Rector up into the pulpit with the last verse of a
hymn, had found the place from which she would presently play him down
again with the tune of another, had propped the open book on the desk of
the harmonium, and had then slid noiselessly into a chair on a line with
the front choir bench, where she now sat with her hands in her lap,
facing the members of her assembled family, sometimes looking down at
the memorial brass of Sir Richard Clinton, knight, obiit 1445, which was
let into the pavement at her feet, sometimes, through the open doors of
the rood screen, to where that bright picture of sunlit green shone out
of the surrounding gloom at the end of the aisle.

"Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment?" The text had
been given out twice and carefully indexed each time. The Squire had
fitted his gold-rimmed glasses on to his nose and tracked down the
passage in his big Bible. Having satisfied himself that the words
announced were identical with the words printed, he had put the Bible on
the narrow shelf in front of him and closed his eyes. His first nod had
followed, as usual, about three minutes after the commencement of the
sermon. He had then opened his eyes wide, met the fascinated gaze of a
small singing-girl opposite to him, glared at her, and, having reduced
her to a state of cataleptic terror, pushed aside the red curtain and
transferred his glare to the body of the church. The bald head of a
respectable farmer and the bonnet of his wife, which were all he could
see of the congregation at the moment, assured him that all was well. He
drew the curtain again and went comfortably to sleep without further
ado.

Mrs. Clinton, at the other end of the row, sat quite still, with no more
evidence of mental effort on her comely, middle-aged face than was
necessary for the due reception of the Rector's ideas, and that was very
little. Joan and Nancy sat one on either side of Miss Bird, Joan next to
her mother. They looked about everywhere but at the preacher, and bided
with what patience they possessed the end of the discourse, aided
thereto by a watchful eye