THREE:Next morning they were not very early risers, and the whole trio were weary and sore from the effect of the ride of ninety miles on the backs of Chinese ponies. Frank said that when he was sitting down he hesitated to rise for fear he should break in two, and Fred asserted that it was dangerous to go from a standing to a sitting position for the same reason.Alice Keeling was sitting close to the window of her mothers room making the most of the fading light of a gray afternoon at the end of October, and busily fashioning leaves of gold thread to be the sumptuous foliage of no less sumptuous purple pomegranates, among which sat curious ecclesiastical fowls, resembling parrots. The gold thread had to be tacked into its place with stitches of gold silk, and this strip of gorgeous embroidery would form when completed part of the decoration of an altar-cloth for the church which till but a few weeks ago, had not even had an altar at all, but only a table. Many other changes had occurred in that hitherto uncompromising edifice. The tables of commandments had vanished utterly; a faint smell of incense hung permanently about the church, copiously renewed every Sunday, candles blazed, vestments flashed, and a confessional, undoubtedly Roman in origin, blocked up a considerable part of the vestry. But chief of all the changes was that of the personality of the vicar, and second to that the state of mind of the parish in general to which, taking it collectively, the word Christian could not properly be applied. But taking the parish in sections, it{98} would not be in the least improper to apply the word ecstatic to that section of it to which Alice Keeling belonged, and the embroidery on which she, like many other young ladies, was employed was not less a work of love than a work of piety. As the blear autumnal light faded, and her mother dozed quietly in her chair, having let her book fall from her lap for the third time, Alice, short-sightedly peering at the almost completed leaf, would have suffered her eyes to drop out of her head rather than relinquish her work. She was sewing little fibres and shreds of her heart into that pomegranate leaf, and it gave her the most exquisite satisfaction to do so.
THREE:"Ferry's scouts. What command is yours, gentlemen?"
THREE:Glad was I then to be on a true cavalryman's horse that answered the closing of my left leg and moved steadily around till I could see down the bridge. Oliver, after a step or two, stopped. "Turn!" I yelled, and swelled. "One, two,--"
THREE:I adore my new parish, he said. I was almost afraid when I took the living I should find too little to do. But coming home late last night from a bedside, if I saw one drunken man I must have seen twenty, some roaring drunk, some simply stupidly drunk, dear fellows! I asked two of them to come home with me, and have another drink, and there was I in the middle with two drunken lads, one with a black eye, reeling along Alfred Street. I dont know what my parishioners must have thought of their new pastor. You should seen my housekeepers face, when I{56} told her that I had brought two friends home with me.Charlotte had ceased, in consternation not for the conditions without more than for those within. With the first strong swell of the song from below, the dying leader strove to sit upright and to lift his blade, but failed and would have slammed back upon the pillows had not she and Miss Harper saved him. He lay in their arms gasping his last, yet clutching his sabre with a quivering hand and listening on with rapt face untroubled by the fiery tumult of cries that broke into and over the strain.
THREE:"But what is the real world like?" questioned Arthur.Take your tea, Emmeline, he said, and youll feel better. You havent had your nap this afternoon, but have been listening to your mother talking all sorts of rabid stuff against me. Dont you deny it now, but just remember I dont care two straws what she says about me behind my back. But I wont stand her impertinence to my face. And as for coal in the winter I can tell you that she still owes me for what she bought{52} at the Stores last January. Perhaps Ill county-court her for the bill. Im glad you talked about coal, I had almost forgotten about that bill.