‘My dear, excuse me. It was the only reason for letting you drag me here. I was almost stifled. What a night I shall have!’
‘I am very sorry, Aunt Ada, but, indeed, I never said that mamma was fond of her, only that papa thought very highly of her husband, and wished us to be kind to her.’
‘Well, you gave me that impression, whether you wished it or not! Such a hole; and I’m sure she drinks gin!’
‘I can’t be mistaken! I really was afraid she was going to kiss you!’
‘I do wish I could have made out about Alexis and Kalliope.’
‘Oh, my dear, just working like all the lot, though she shuffled about it. I see what they are like, and the less you see of them the better. I declare I am more tired than if I had walked a mile. How am I ever to get up the hill again?’
‘I am sorry, aunt,’ said Gillian. ‘Will you take my arm? Perhaps we may meet Kalliope, if the marble people come out at four or five. What’s that bell?’ as a little tinkle was heard.
‘That’s St. Kenelm’s! Oh! you would like to go there, and it would rest me; only there’s Kunz.’
‘I should like to see it very much,’ said Gillian.
‘Well,’ said Aunt Ada, who certainly seemed to have something of the ‘cat’s away’ feeling about her, and, moreover, trusted to avoid meeting Kalliope. ‘Just round the corner here is Mrs. Webb’s, who used to live with us before she married, Kunz will be happy with her. Won’t he, my doggie, like to go and see his old Jessie?’
So Kunz was disposed of with a very pleasant, neat-looking woman, who begged Miss Adeline to come and have some tea after the service.
It was really a beautiful little church--‘a little gem’ was exactly the term that suggested itself--very ornate, and the chief lack being of repose, for there seemed not an inch devoid of colour or carving. There was a choir of boys in short surplices and blue cassocks, and a very musical service, in the course of which it was discovered to be the Feast of St. Remigius, for after the Lesson a short discourse was given on the Conversion of Clovis, not forgetting the sacred ampulla.
There were about five ladies present and six old women, belonging to a home maintained by Lady Flight. The young priest, her son, had a beautiful voice, and Gillian enjoyed all very much, and thought the St. Andrew’s people very hard and unjust; but all this went out of her head in the porch, for while Lady Flight was greeting Miss Mohun with empressement, and inviting her to come in to tea, Gillian had seen a young woman who had come in late and had been kneeling behind them.