The vicar always preached for exactly ten minutes. He took an old-fashioned hour-glass up into the pulpit with him, and when it ran out he concluded his discourse. Redmarley folk highly approved this ritual. When stray parsons came to preach, especially if they were dignitaries of the church, a body could never tell what they might be at, and the suspense was wearing. Why, the Dean of Garchester had been known to keep on for half an hour. The Redmarley worshippers rarely slept. It wasn't worth while. Instead, they kept a wary eye upon the hour-glass. They trusted to their vicar's honour, and he rarely failed them. As the last grains of sand ran out he turned to the east, and most people were back home and sitting down to supper by eight o'clock. Miss Gallup never hurried out of church. She thought it unseemly. Therefore, it came to pass that Eloquent was still standing in his place as Mary Ffolliot and her brother came down the aisle. Mary looked him full in the face as she passed, and smiled frankly at him with friendly recognition. The "knut" had gone on ahead. Eloquent gave no answering smile. For one thing, he had never for one moment expected her to take the slightest notice of him, and the fact that she had done so raised a perfect tumult of unexpected and inexplicable emotion. The hot blood rushed to his face, and there was a singing in his ears. He turned right round and stared down the aisle at her retreating form, and was only roused to a sense of mundane things by a violent poke in the small of his back, and his aunt's voice buzzing in an irritated whisper: "Go on, my boy, do you want to stop here all night?" "Mr Grantly read very nice, didn't he?" Miss Gallup remarked complacently, as they were walking home. "To tell you the truth, Aunt Susan, I thought he read very badly: he bellowed so, and was absolutely wanting in expression." "Poor young gentleman," Miss Gallup said tolerantly. "Last time he read, back in summer it was, he did read so soft like, no one could hear a word he said, and I know they all went on at him something dreadful, so this time I suppose he thought as they _should_ hear him." "Do you think," Eloquent asked diffidently, "that Mr Molyneux would like me to read the lessons some Sunday when I'm down here?" Miss Gallup stopped short. "Well, now," she exclaimed, "to think of you suggestin' that, an' I was just wonderin' at that very minute whether if I was to ask you--you'd snap my head off, you being chapel and all." Eloquent longed to say that he was not so wrapped up in chapel as all that, but long habits of self-restraint stood him in good stead. Where possible votes were concerned it did not do to speak the thought of the moment, so he merely remarked indifferently that he'd be "pleased to be of any assistance."