g
loudly and with a certain sweetness. Mr. Pendyce, too, sang, and once or
twice he looked in surprise at his brother, as though he were not making
a creditable noise.

Mrs. Pendyce did not sing, but her lips moved, and her eyes followed the
millions of little dust atoms dancing in the long slanting sunbeam.
Its gold path canted slowly from her, then, as by magic, vanished. Mrs.
Pendyce let her eyes fall. Something had fled from her soul with the
sunbeam; her lips moved no more.

The Squire sang two loud notes, spoke three, sang two again; the Psalms
ceased. He left his seat, and placing his hands on the lectern's sides,
leaned forward and began to read the Lesson. He read the story of
Abraham and Lot, and of their flocks and herds, and how they could
not dwell together, and as he read, hypnotised by the sound of his own
voice, he was thinking:

'This Lesson is well read by me, Horace Pendyce. I am Horace
Pendyce--Horace Pendyce. Amen, Horace Pendyce!'

And in the first pew on the left Mrs. Pendyce fixed her eyes upon him,
for this was her habit, and she thought how, when the spring came again,
she would run up to town, alone, and stay at Green's Hotel, where she
had always stayed with her father when a girl. George had promised to
look after her, and take her round the theatres. And forgetting that she
had thought this every autumn for the last ten years, she gently smiled
and nodded. Mr. Pendyce said:

"'And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth; so that if a man
can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered.
Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of
it; for I will give it unto thee. Then Abram removed his tent, and came
and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an
altar unto the Lord.' Here endeth the first Lesson."

The sun, reaching the second window, again shot a gold pathway athwart
the church; again the millions of dust atoms danced, and the service
went on.

There came a hush. The spaniel John, crouched close to the ground
outside, poked his long black nose under the churchyard gate; the
fox-terriers, seated patient in the grass, pricked their ears. A voice
speaking on one note broke the hush. The spaniel John sighed, the
fox-terriers dropped their ears, and lay down heavily against each
other. The Rector had begun to preach. He preached on fruitfulness, and
in the first right-hand pew six of his children at once b