Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/118

110 deed be a wonderful gush of misery or affection that produces a hug. Therefore, lest I be pounced on and kissed in mistake for somebody else, I precipitately retire to my bed, where I sleep as soundly and well as though leaving home and going to school were a most regular, everyday affair.

An evil bell clanging through the pleasant tangle of a dream awakens me. Before I am half dressed it sounds again, but somehow or other I scramble downstairs behind the rest to the school-room, where lessons are gone through for an hour, while I look on; then prayers, conducted in a widely different fashion to that prevailing at home; then breakfast—good tea, good bread, sweet butter; then to church, where the service lasts half an hour. The church is scarcely bigger than a chapel, quite lovely in its dainty smallness, and far more richly garnished than are many more imposing edifices. The seats are of carved oak, every window is of stained glass—(I wonder why those strange stiff figures of saint and apostle, that violate every rule of art, impress us with the idea of a supernatural beauty that no amount of exquisite and correct drawing could afford?)—the east one, a soft blaze of colour through which the light falls on the tesselated chancel floor in glorious patches of amber, purple, green, and gold. It looks very hushed, and quaint, and solemn; and as I slip into my seat in the chancel, which is divided from the body of the church by a carved screen, a wonderfully strange, novel sensation steals over me. It seems so odd to be kneeling without papa's stern eye upon me, and all the dear brothers and sisters stretching out right and left, in goodly sober ranks. The thought of them nearly sets me off crying again, for I have given my eyes a good rest during the night; but I fight the tears back and make my responses with the rest.

The clergyman almost makes me jump as I look at him; I have seen the same face, only twenty years younger maybe, hanging up in papa's study between a print of Taglioni in her best days, and a