Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/231

Rh Then they leaned back, settling in their places with a wriggle of gratification, to wait, fidgeting, for Evensong to begin.

The stroke of half-past six brought the surpliced chaplain, brisk and businesslike. The Organist played him in with slow, droning chords, dying away in muffled pedal notes as he kneeled awhile in his place. It was his only deliberate act, almost, through the service. The congregation shuffled hurriedly to its feet when he rose to gabble the exhortation. One of the babies—the subjects of the anticipated sacrament—woke up and had to be hushed after the fashion of babes at an age when, even for the infant pauper, food is easy to come by.

Evensong was briskly performed. Then the clergyman made his way to the font, emptied into it what may have been half a pint of water from the little crockery jug, and began to read the Order for the Publick Baptism of Infants. "Have these children been already baptized, or no?"

The mothers stood up, nervous and inaudible, the only sponsors. In the more essential parts they had to be prompted individually by the chaplain in a stage-whisper: "Say I renounce them all—"Say 'All this I steadfastly believe. One of them was a sullen woman, well over thirty, with a brutish face and disappearing chin; the other, a light-haired, rosy-cheeked girl, who hung her head and cried quietly all through the ceremony. Neither wore a wedding-ring. In the brisk time set by the clergyman, the ordeal was soon over, and the congregation—the women, old and young, intensely interested in the babies—rose to sing the baptismal hymn:

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