The vicar rang for tea, but Eloquent arose hastily, saying he had
promised to have tea with his aunt. He had no desire to prolong the
interview with this urbane old gentleman now that its object was
achieved. Mr Molyneux saw him to the front door and watched him for a
moment as he bustled down the drive. "So that," he said to himself, as
he went back to the warm study, "is our future member . . . for
everyone says he will get in. Why does he want to read the lessons, I
wonder? It will certainly do him no good with his dissenting
constituents, and it is they who will get him in--what can his object
be?"

The Ffolliot family formed quite a procession as they marched up the
aisle on Christmas morning. General and Mrs Grantly were there;
Reggie, Mr and Mrs Ffolliot, and the six young Ffolliots. They
overflowed into the seat behind, and the Kitten, whom nothing ever awed
or subdued, was heard to remark that since she couldn't sit with
Willets, the keeper, who always had "such instasting things in his
pottets," she'd sit "between the Ganpies." Reggie, Mary, and her four
brothers filled the second seat: Mary sat at the far end, and Ger
nearest the aisle, that he might gaze entrancedly at his grandfather
while he read the lesson. Reggie came next to Ger, and Grantly
separated Uz and Buz, so that Eloquent only caught an occasional
glimpse of Mary's extremely flat back between the heads of other
worshippers.

"Oh come, all ye faithful!" the choir sang lustily as it started in
procession round the church, and the faithful responded vigorously.
The Kitten pranced on her hassock, and always started the new verse
before everyone else in the clearest of pure trebles. The Ffolliot
boys shouted, and for once Mr Ffolliot forebore to frown on them. No
woman with a houseful of children can remain quite unmoved on Christmas
morning during that singularly jubilant invocation, and Mrs Grantly and
Margery Ffolliot ceased to sing, for their eyes were full of tears. Mr
Ffolliot fixed his monocle more firmly, and bent forward to look at the
Kitten, and to catch her little pipe above the shouts of her brothers
behind.

The Kitten sang words of her own composition during the Psalms, her
grandparents both singing loudly themselves in their efforts not to
hear her, for the Kitten's improvisations were enough to upset the
gravity of a bench of bishops.

The General read the first lesson in a brisk and business-like
monotone, and whe