58 The Real Charlotte. 



that under no pretext whatever should Pamela entice him 

 there again. They were all sitting down now, while the 

 leaders consulted together about the Kyrie, and the gallery 

 cushions slowly turned to stone in their well-remembered 

 manner. Christopher's ideas of church-going were insepar- 

 ably bound up with those old gallery cushions. He had sat 

 upon them ever since, as a small boy, he had chirped a treble 

 beside his governess, and he knew every knob in their anatomy. 

 There is something blighting to the devotional tendencies in 

 the atmosphere of a gallery. He had often formulated this 

 theory for his own exculpation, lying flat on his back in a 

 punt in some shady backwater, with the Oxford church bells 

 reminding him reproachfully of Lismoyle Sundays, and of 

 Pamela, — the faithful, conscientious Pamela, — whipping up 

 the pony to get to church before the bell stopped. Now, after 

 a couple of months' renewed acquaintance with the choir, 

 the theory had hardened into a tedious truism, and when at 

 last Christopher's long legs were free to carry him down the 

 steep stairs, the malign influence of the gallery had brought 

 their owner to the verge of free thought. 



He did not know how it had happened or by whose dis- 

 position of the forces it had been brought about, but when 

 Miss Mullen's tea-party detached itself from the other mem- 

 bers of the choir at the churchyard gate, Pamela and Miss 

 Hope-Drummond were walking on either side of their hos- 

 tess, and he was behind with Miss Fitzpatrick. 



"You don't appear very fond of hymns, Mr. Dysart," 

 began Francie at once, in the pert Dublin accent that, 

 rightly or wrongly, gives the idea of familiarity. 



*' People aren't supposed to look about them in church," 

 replied Christopher with the pecuhar suavity which, com- 

 bined with his disconcerting infirmity of pausing before he 

 spoke, had often baflled the young ladies of Barbadoes, and 

 had acquired for him the reputation, perhaps not wholly 

 undeserved, of being a prig. 



"Oh, I daresay!" said Francie, "I suppose that's why 

 you sit in the back seat, that no one'U see you doing it ! " 



There was a directness about this that Lismoyle would 

 not have ventured on, and Christopher looked down at his 

 companion with an increase of interest. 



** No ; I sit there because I can go to sleep." 



