In the cosy porch of the church were Sir Madoc Lloyd and his hunting bachelor friend, Sir Watkins Vaughan, each solacing himself with a cigar while waiting for the ladies, to escort whom home they had driven over from the Court after dinner in Sir Watkins' bang-up dog-cart. While smoking and chatting (about the war of course, as no one spoke of anything else then), they peeped from time to time at the picturesque vista of the church, where garlands of ivy and glistening holly, green and white, with scarlet berries, and masses of artificial flowers, were fast making gay the grim Norman arches and sturdy pillars, with their grotesque capitals and quaint details. Nor were the tombs and trophies of the Lloyds of other times forgotten; so the old baronet watched with a pleased smile the slender fingers of his young daughter as they deftly wreathed with holly and bay the rusty helmet that whilom Madoc ap Meredyth wore at Flodden and Pinkey, her blue eyes radiant the while with girlish happiness, and her hair as usual in its unmanageable masses rolling down her back, and seeming in the lights that flickered here and there like gold shaded away with auburn. The curate, a tall, thin, and closely-shaven man, in a "Noah's-ark coat" with a ritualistic collar, stood irresolutely between the sisters, though generally preferring the graver Winifred to the somewhat hoydenish Dora, who insisted on appropriating his services in the task of weaving and tying the garlands; but he was little more than an onlooker, as the ladies seemed to have taken entire possession of the church and reduced him to a well-pleased cipher. At last Sir Watkins, a pleasant and gentlemanly young man, though somewhat of the "horsey" and fox-hunting type, who had a genuine admiration for Winifred, and had actually proposed for her hand (but, like poor Phil Caradoc, had done so in vain), seemed to think that he was letting his reverence have the ladies' society too exclusively, tossed his cigar into the snow, entered the church, and joined them; while Sir Madoc preferred to linger in the porch and think over the changes each of those successive festivals saw, and of the old friends who were no longer here to share them with him. "Here comes Sir Watkins, to make himself useful, at last!" said Dora, clapping her hands, as she infinitely preferred the fox-hunter to the parson. "I shall insist upon him going up the long ladder, and nailing all those leaves over that arch."