"It's worse than that," Miss Tattersall explained gaily; "because Mr. Sturton waits for the Jervaises, to begin. When we're late we hold up the devotions of the whole parish."
"Good Lord!" I commented; sincerely, this time; and with a thought of my socialist friend Banks. I could still sympathise with him on that score, even though I was now strongly inclined to side with the Jervaises in the Brenda affair.
"Yes, isn't it?" Miss Tattersall agreed. "Of course, they _are_ the only important people in the place," she added thoughtfully.
"So important that it's slightly presumptuous to worship God without the sanction of their presence in church," I remarked. And then, feeling that this comment was a trifle too strong for my company, I tried to cover it by changing the subject.
"I say, do you think we _ought_ to stay on here over the week-end?" I asked. "Wouldn't it be more tactful of us to invent excuses and leave them to themselves?"
"Certainly it would. Have you only just thought of it?" Miss Tattersall said pertly. "Nora and I agreed about that before we came down to prayers. But there's a difficulty that seems, for the moment, insuperable."
"No conveyance," she explained. "There aren't any Sunday trains on the loop line, Hurley Junction is fifteen miles away, and the Jervaises' car is Heaven knows where and the only other that is borrowable, Mr. Turnbull's, is derelict just outside the Park gates."
I thought she was rather inclined to make a song of it all, genuinely thankful to have so sound an excuse for staying to witness the dramatic developments that might possibly be in store for us. I do not deny that I appreciated her feeling in that matter.
"Too far for them, in the omnibus," she said. "And nothing else would be big enough for four people and their luggage. But, as a matter of fact, Nora and I talked it all over with Mrs. Jervaise before prayers, and she said we weren't to think of going--especially as it was all right, now, about Brenda."
"I'm glad it is all right, if only for old Jervaise's sake," I said, craftily.
She looked up at me, trying to guess how far I was honest in that remark.
"But you don't really believe..." she said.
"Had to, of course," Miss Tattersall replied curtly.
