"Yes...Hart-Smith's successor."

"Oh, yes--I believe he does...."

Cobbett, the Verger, with his gold staff, appeared in the Vestry door. A
tall handsome man, he had been in the service of the Cathedral as man and
boy for fifty years. He had his private ambitions, the main one being that
old Lawrence, the head Verger, in his opinion a silly old fool, should die
and permit his own legitimate succession. Another ambition was that he
should save enough money to buy another three cottages down in Seatown. He
owned already six there. But no one observing his magnificent impassivity
(he was famous for this throughout ecclesiastical Glebeshire) would have
supposed that he had any thought other than those connected with ceremony.
As he appeared the organ began its voluntary, the music stealing through
the thick grey walls, creeping past the stout grey pillars that had
listened, with so impervious an immobility, to an endless succession of
voluntaries. The Archdeacon prayed, the choir responded with a long Amen,
and the procession filed out, the boys with faces pious and wistful, the
choir-men moving with nonchalance, their restless eyes wandering over the
scene so absolutely known to them. Then came Rogers like a martyr; Dobell
gaily as though he were enjoying some little joke of his own; last of all,
Brandon, superb in carriage, in dignity, in his magnificent recognition of
the value of ceremony.

Because to-day was simply an ordinary afternoon with an ordinary Anthem
and an ordinary service (Martin in F) the congregation was small, the
gates of the great screen closed with a clang behind the choir, and the
nave, purple grey under the soft light of the candle-lit choir, was shut
out into twilight. In the high carved seats behind and beyond the choir
the congregation was sitting; Miss Dobell, who never missed a service that