had those curious bars across them which are designed to
save men from wetting their moustaches when they drink. No room and no
preparation for a meal could have offered a more striking contrast to
Augusta Goold's dining-room, her groups of wineglasses, multiplicity of
heavy-handled knives and forks, and her candles shrouded in silk. Nor
was the dainty neatness less remote from the cracked delf and huddled
sordidness of his old home.

Long before Hyacinth had realized an impression of the scene before him
Mrs. Quinn greeted him, and led him to the fire. Her two little girls,
who lay on the hearthrug with a picture-book between them, were bidden
to make room for him. When her husband appeared she bustled off, and in
a minute or two she and the maid came in bringing toast and tea and hot
water hissing in a silver urn.

As the evening passed Hyacinth began to realize that he had entered into
a home of peace. He felt that these people were neither greatly anxious
to be rich nor much afraid of being poor. They seemed in no way fretted
that there were others higher in the social scale, cleverer or more
brilliant than they were. He understood that they were both of them
religious in a way quite different from any he had known. They neither
spoke of mysteries, like his father, nor were eager about disputings,
like the men who had been his fellow-students. They were living a very
simple life, of which faith and a wide charity formed a part as natural
as eating or sleeping. When the children's bedtime came it seemed to
him a very wonderful thing that they should kneel in turns beside their
father's knee and say their prayers aloud, when he, a stranger, was in
the room. It seemed to him less strange, because then he had been two
hours longer in the company of the Quinns, that before leaving he,
too, should kneel beside his hostess and listen while his new employer
repeated the familiar words of some of the old collects he had heard his
father read in church.

CHAPTER XIV

On Sunday, the third day after his arrival in Ballymoy, Hyacinth went to
church. He could hardly have avoided doing so, even if he had wanted to,
for Mrs. Quinn invited him to share her pew. There was no real necessity
for such hospitality, for the church was never, even under the most
favourable circumstances, more than half full. The four front seats were
reserved for a Mr. Stack, on whose property the town of Ballymoy stood.
But this gentleman prefer