Dorothy Usk does not favor the modern mode of having relays of guests for two or three days; she thinks it makes a country house too like an hotel. She wishes her people to be perfectly well assorted, and then to stay with her at least a week, even two weeks or three weeks. People do not often object: Orme, Denton, and Surrenden are all popular places, and Surrenden is perhaps most popular of all. "An ideal house," says Brandolin, who would not stay a day where he was not as free as air. "It's too much like an hotel," grumbles the master of it, "and an hotel where the _table-d'hôte_ bell rings to deaf ears. Lord! I remember in my poor mother's days everybody had to be down to breakfast at nine o'clock every morning as regularly as if they were charity children, and the whole lot of 'em were marched off to church on Sunday whether they liked it or not. The villagers used to line the path across the fields to see the great folks pass. Now it's as much as ever Dolly can do to get a woman or two up in time to go with her. How things are changed, by Jove! And it isn't so very long ago, either." "The march of intellect, my dear George," says Brandolin; "neither _le bon Dieu_ nor we are great folks any longer." "Well, I think it's a pity," sighs Usk. "Everybody was happier then, and jollier too, though we do tear about so to try and get amused." "There is still nothing to prevent you going to sleep in the big pew if it pleases you," replies Brandolin; "and Lawrence Hamilton always goes that he may look at Mrs. Curzon's profile as she sings: she is really saintly then. I think Sunday service is to Englishwomen what confession is to Catholic ladies: it sweeps all the blots off the week's tablets. It is convenient, if illogical." "You are very irreligious," says his host, who is invariably orthodox when orthodoxy doesn't interfere with anything. "Not more so than most people," says Brandolin. "I have even felt religious when I have been alone in the savannas or in the jungle. I don't feel so in a wooden box covered with red velvet, with a curate bawling in my ears about the hewing in pieces of Agag." "That's nothing to do with it," says Usk: "we're bound to set an example." "That's why you doze in public, and Mrs. Curzon wears her big pearls, to lead the school-children in the way they should go." "That's nothing to do with it," repeats Lord Usk, somewhat crossly. He has a comfortable if indistinct idea that he does something patriotic, patriarchal, and highly praiseworthy in getting up an hour earlier than usual one Sunday out of three, and putting on a tall hat, a frock-coat, and a pair of new gloves, to attend the village church for morning service when he is at Orme, Denton, or Surrenden in fine weather.