eye upon the hour-glass. They trusted to
their vicar's honour, and he rarely failed them. As the last grains of
sand ran out he turned to the east, and most people were back home and
sitting down to supper by eight o'clock.

Miss Gallup never hurried out of church. She thought it unseemly.
Therefore, it came to pass that Eloquent was still standing in his
place as Mary Ffolliot and her brother came down the aisle. Mary
looked him full in the face as she passed, and smiled frankly at him
with friendly recognition.

The "knut" had gone on ahead.

Eloquent gave no answering smile. For one thing, he had never for one
moment expected her to take the slightest notice of him, and the fact
that she had done so raised a perfect tumult of unexpected and
inexplicable emotion.

The hot blood rushed to his face, and there was a singing in his ears.
He turned right round and stared down the aisle at her retreating form,
and was only roused to a sense of mundane things by a violent poke in
the small of his back, and his aunt's voice buzzing in an irritated
whisper: "Go on, my boy, do you want to stop here all night?"

"Mr Grantly read very nice, didn't he?"

Miss Gallup remarked complacently, as they were walking home.

"To tell you the truth, Aunt Susan, I thought he read very badly: he
bellowed so, and was absolutely wanting in expression."

"Poor young gentleman," Miss Gallup said tolerantly. "Last time he
read, back in summer it was, he did read so soft like, no one could
hear a word he said, and I know they all went on at him something
dreadful, so this time I suppose he thought as they _should_ hear him."

"Do you think," Eloquent asked diffidently, "that Mr Molyneux would
like me to read the lessons some Sunday when I'm down here?"

Miss Gallup stopped short.

"Well, now," she exclaimed, "to think of you suggestin' that, an' I was
just wonderin' at that very minute whether if I was to ask you--you'd
snap my head off, you being chapel and all."

Eloquent longed to say that he was not so wrapped up in chapel as all
that, but long habits of self-restraint stood him in good stead. Where
possible votes were concerned it did not do to speak the thought of the
moment, so he merely remarked indifferently that he'd be "pleased to be
of any assistance."

"Of course," Miss Gallup continued, as she walked on, "there's no
knowing whether, with the election coming on and all, the vicar might
think it quite suitable, th