Other speakers followed with the same transcendental vocabulary, and then hymns, in an interval between which, the black-garmented Deacon with a royal gesture, that seemed to sweep away the remotest effluvium of aniseed or moleskins, sent Will a hymn-book by a deferentially wriggling Brother. It seemed an ironic revenge for the book he had flung into the bushes, but it saved him from the oppressive proximity of his father’s, which he had been sharing; for the old man, though he could not read the book, liked to hold it as he had always held it with Martha, and indeed could not have sung without feeling it at his fingers’ ends. Will turned its pages with curiosity, thinking of Bundock’s “village idiot,” and noting that it was still published by a village barber. Then a gaunt, horn-spectacled man was seized of the Spirit. “I’ve been looking for a han’kercher,” he began, to Will’s surprise. “I’ve been looking for a han’kercher,” he repeated. “I’ve been looking for a han’kercher,” he recapitulated with rising rhetoric, “to wipe my tears away.” But the thrilling level, of this exordium was not maintained, and the stock phrases started again, merciless, unendurable, beating on Will’s brain till they beat vainly against the depths of his reverie—or was it his doze? Ah, surely that was Jinny’s horn at last! No, it was only his father blowing emotionally into his red cotton handkerchief—too huge to need looking for—a duplicate of that which held their meals. Besides, Jinny wouldn’t be blowing her horn of a Sunday. But why didn’t she come to chapel, the graceless minx? Was she careering around with that Farmer Gale, or was it her grandfather’s illness? If flighty young girls, with hearts sound at bottom, would come here and unfold the error of their independent ways, the practice of confession might be justified, and chapel-service become both useful and exciting. But these faded people, these ungainly men and fubsy females! Who on earth cared for their drab histories? Ah, there was Mother Gander, not so podgy as most—in the blue silk of auld lang syne—if only _she_ would get up—or even Charley Mott—there would be some spark of interest. But no, the horn-spectacled bore held the floor pitilessly, and the phrases beat on. “Be-yu-tiful, be-yu-tiful words—I thought I should die!—Poor me! What a comfort in them words!” And the nasal voice, its fervour unallayed by its own outpouring, still punctuated the other speeches with jerky interpolations. “Praise the Lord!” or “Glory!” came with fiery iteration, and sometimes this saint with the mutton-chop whiskers said “Lord bless me!” or “Lord bless my soul!” and these frayed and almost meaningless ejaculations seemed full of a startling significance in _his_ mouth and nose. “Brother Bridges, they said to me, how’s your soul? I couldn’t give ’em a straightforward answer.”