This information was generally received with bated breath by visitors to the church, and the good woman was conscious of very natural disgust when Maimie responded to it merely with a casual “Is that so, really?” They had paused in the porch while the guide pointed out the modern representative of the fateful pew, but now she led the way in with a jangle of keys and a contemptuous sniff. Maimie devoured the scene with eager eyes. The fine dark oak carving in the chancel, the small oval window representing the Nativity, and the large window above it, decorated in stripes of crude colour--she knew them all, but there was something wanting. “There ought to be pictures of Moses and Aaron there!” she cried, pointing to the chancel, “and right high up on that wall a big shadowy picture of some old king or queen, in a great gold frame.” “Well, now, to think of you knowin’ that!” the clerk’s wife was somewhat mollified; “and you must ’a been rare and small when you left the parish, miss, for me not to remember you.” “I’ve never been here in my life before, but I heard all about the church in America,” said Maimie breathlessly. “What’s come to the pictures?” “Why, Moses and Aaron is there still, miss, hid out of sight behind that there bed-furniture, as I calls it--and as like as two peas to my aunt’s best bed, as lived out Earlham way,” pointing to an elaborate curtain behind the communion-table. “That’s the new Vicar’s doin’”--Maimie felt her heart sink--“and her Majesty Queen Hann and the Royal Harms is both took down and made away with--despisin’ of dignities, as we’re told shall be.” “But the registers are here yet, I suppose? and I can see about this marriage, any way?” asked Maimie anxiously, for the clerk was coming up the church, unorthodox corduroys marring the effect of his professional black coat. She had discovered from a board over his door that he was an undertaker in a small way on week-days, and it had been necessary to send a boy to summon him, while his wife led the way to the church. “Oh yes, miss. No one can’t do nothing to them. Here’s Clegg just a-comin’. You step this way,” and Maimie was ushered into the vestry, a small room panelled throughout in dark oak. Light was admitted by two windows close under the ceiling, and the decorations were confined to a table of the Degrees of Affinity, and another, quite as long and a good deal more complicated, of burial fees. Presently the clerk arrived, and opened a huge safe built in the thickness of the wall and masked by the wainscoting. “What might be the year of the marriage you was wishin’ to find, miss?” he asked, and Maimie noticed that the woman looked suspiciously at her when she answered. She had determined that she would give no clue to her identity, in case some evil chance should lead Mr Steinherz to revisit the church, but she foresaw that it might be difficult to maintain this reticence.