let alone six. He's always reading
and writing and studying and sitting with his nose in a book, and then
he complains of nerves. I'd nerve him if I was his wife--but she's all
for peace, poor lady, and I suppose she makes the best of a bad job."

"Is she unhappy?" Eloquent demanded, with real solicitude.

"If she is, she don't show it, anyhow. She goes her way, and he goes
his, and her way's crowded with the children, and there it is."

"Are you thinking of going to church, Aunt Susan?"

Miss Gallup looked surprised.

"Well, no, not if you don't want to come. I generally go, but I'm more
than willing to stop with you."

"But I'd like to go," Eloquent asserted, and got very red in the face
as he did so. "I don't think I've ever been in the church here."

"Well, there's no chapel as you could go to if you was ever so minded.
Old Mr Molyneux mayn't be so active as some, but there's never been no
dissent since he was vicar, and that's forty years last Michaelmas."

"What about my father?" Eloquent suggested.

"Your dear father got his dissenting opinions and his politics in
Marlehouse, not here."

"Then I'm afraid I shan't get many votes from this village," said
Eloquent, but he said it cheerfully, as though he didn't care.

"That's for you to see to," Miss Gallup said significantly; "there's no
tellin' what a persuasive tongue mayn't do."

As Eloquent walked through the darkness with his aunt, he heard her
cheerful voice go rippling on as in a dream. He had no idea what she
talked about, his whole mind was concentrated in the question: "Will
she be there?"

CHAPTER V

THE IMPRESSIONS ARE INTENSIFIED

The service at Redmarley Church was "medium high." It boasted an
organist and a surpliced choir, and the choir intoned the responses.
"The old Vicar," as Mr Molyneux liked to be called, was musical, and
saw to it that the Sunday services were melodiously and well rendered.
Very rarely was there a week-day service. The villagers would have
regarded them in the light of a dangerous innovation; yet,
notwithstanding the lack of daily services, the church stood open from
sunrise to sunset always, and though very few people ever entered it
during the week, they would have been most indignant had it ever been
shut.

The church was too big for the village: it was built early in the
fourteenth century when the Manor House was a monastery, and at a time
when Redmarley was the religious centre for half