her brother was singing, with her pinched white face and funny old-
fashioned bonnet, lost between the huge arms of her seat; Mrs. Combermere,
with a friend, stiff and majestic; Mrs. Cole and her sister-in-law, Amy
Cole; a few tourists; a man or two; Major Drake, who liked to join in the
psalms with his deep bass; and little Mr. Thompson, one of the masters at
the School who loved music and always came to Evensong when he could.

There they were then, and the Archdeacon, looking at them from his stall,
could not but feel that they were rather a poor lot. Not that he exactly
despised them; he felt kindly towards them and would have done no single
one of them an injury, but he knew them all so well--Mrs. Combermere, Miss
Dobell, Mrs. Cole, Drake, Thompson. They were shadows before him. If he
looked hard at them, they seemed to disappear....

The exultation that he had felt as he stood outside his house-door
increased with every moment that passed. It was strange, but he had never,
perhaps, in all his life been so happy as he was at that hour. He was
driven by the sense of it to that, with him, rarest of all things,
introspection. Why should he feel like this? Why did his heart beat
thickly, why were his cheeks flushed with a triumphant heat? It could not
but be that he was realising to-day how everything was well with him. And
why should he not realise it? Looking up to the high vaulted roofs above
him, he greeted God, greeted Him as an equal, and thanked Him as a fellow-
companion who had helped him through a difficult and dusty journey. He
thanked Him for his health, for his bodily vigour and strength, for his
beauty, for his good brain, for his successful married life, for his wife
(poor Amy), for his house and furniture, for his garden and tennis-lawn,
for his carriage and horses, for his son, for his position in the town,
his dominance in the Chapter, his authority on the School Council, his
importance in the district.... For all these things he thanked God, and he