The room into which he was shown was different from any he had ever seen. It was lit by a single lamp with a dull glass globe and a turf fire which burnt brightly. Two straight-backed, leather-covered chairs stood one on either side of the tiled hearth. Near one stood a little table covered with neatly-arranged books, and, rising from among them, a reading-lamp, as yet unlit. Beyond the other was a work-table strewed with reels and scissors, on which lay a child’s frock and some stockings. The table was laid for tea. On it were plates piled up with floury scones, delicate beleek saucers full of butter patted thin into the shapes of shells, and jam in coloured glass dishes cased in silver filigree. A large home-baked loaf of soda bread on a wooden platter stood at one end of the table, and near it a sponge-cake. At the other end was an array of cups and saucers with silver spoons that glittered, a jug of cream, and one of milk. Two of the cups were larger than the others, and had those curious bars across them which are designed to save men from wetting their moustaches when they drink. No room and no preparation for a meal could have offered a more striking contrast to Augusta Goold’s dining-room, her groups of wineglasses, multiplicity of heavy-handled knives and forks, and her candles shrouded in silk. Nor was the dainty neatness less remote from the cracked delf and huddled sordidness of his old home. Long before Hyacinth had realized an impression of the scene before him Mrs. Quinn greeted him, and led him to the fire. Her two little girls, who lay on the hearthrug with a picture-book between them, were bidden to make room for him. When her husband appeared she bustled off, and in a minute or two she and the maid came in bringing toast and tea and hot water hissing in a silver urn. As the evening passed Hyacinth began to realize that he had entered into a home of peace. He felt that these people were neither greatly anxious to be rich nor much afraid of being poor. They seemed in no way fretted that there were others higher in the social scale, cleverer or more brilliant than they were. He understood that they were both of them religious in a way quite different from any he had known. They neither spoke of mysteries, like his father, nor were eager about disputings, like the men who had been his fellow-students. They were living a very simple life, of which faith and a wide charity formed a part as natural as eating or sleeping. When the children’s bedtime came it seemed to him a very wonderful thing that they should kneel in turns beside their father’s knee and say their prayers aloud, when he, a stranger, was in the room. It seemed to him less strange, because then he had been two hours longer in the company of the Quinns, that before leaving he, too, should kneel beside his hostess and listen while his new employer repeated the familiar words of some of the old collects he had heard his father read in church. CHAPTER XIV