The interior of the church was very different to what you might have expected from the outside view. The dowager, to do her justice, was not mean in all things; and, although she would screw her tenants down and pinch her household, she could occasionally--very occasionally it must be confessed--be not only liberal but grand in her views, that is when it suited her book. She had had the church newly fitted up some short time before, when her High Church fever and devotion to Ritualism had first begun; and all its columns and crossbeams and rough rafters, which could be seen within, were newly varnished and resplendent in their graining. The chancel, too, was a wonder of blue and gold, and she had also presented a novel reading-desk or _lectern_, consisting of a brass eagle with outstretched wings, which stood in the centre of the aisle, and presented quite a grand appearance. The pews were not what one generally calls pews at all: they were a series of high-backed benches, armed at each end, and placed in rows down the middle of the aisle facing the pulpit and chancel, those at the side being arranged at right angles, so that the lateral pews faced each other; this position must be borne in mind, as it accounts for a trifling circumstance which led to the origin of the present chapter. Slowly and majestically Mrs Hartshorne marched into the church, and slowly and majestically Tom marched after her, carrying her large prayer-book and Bible of the size originally distributed by the Religious Tract Society--a service generally performed by the henchman "Jarge," as he pronounced his own name--while Markworth brought up the rear of the procession. The dowager's pew was immediately opposite the pulpit, and, of course, facing the side pews on the other side behind the reading-desk, the front one of which was devoted to the use of the incumbent for the time being and his family, in case he had any. Up the aisle in its onward and solemn progress the procession passed, and the dowager was soon ensconced in the extreme upper corner of the pew, with her devotional exercises arranged before her on the _prie-Dieu_, and her hands folded on her lap, now deprived of their customary woollen envelopes, as prim as you please. "Primness was no name for it, sir," as Markworth said afterwards to Tom; "her position was--yes, sir, statuesque, by Jove!" The guest sat bodkin between the two, while Tom occupied the corner--by the place where the door should have been if there had been one--from which point he could command a portion of the clerical pew, otherwise obscured from general observation, at least on this side of the house, by the reading-desk.