Their
place was near the river, so I slipped a suit of flannels in my
bag, and on the Sunday morning I came down in them. He met me in
the garden. He was dressed in a frock coat and a white waistcoat;
and I noticed that he kept looking at me out of the corner of his
eye, and that he seemed to have a trouble on his mind. The first
breakfast bell rang, and then he said, "You haven't got any proper
clothes with you, have you?"
"Proper clothes!" I exclaimed, stopping in some alarm. "Why, has
anything given way?"
"No, not that," he explained. "I mean clothes to go to church in."
"Church," I said. "You're surely not going to church a fine day
like this? I made sure you'd be playing tennis, or going on the
river. You always used to."
"Yes," he replied, nervously flicking a rose-bush with a twig he
had picked up. "You see, it isn't ourselves exactly. Maud and I
would rather like to, but our cook, she's Scotch, and a little
strict in her notions."
"And does she insist on your going to church every Sunday morning?"
I inquired.
"Well," he answered, "she thinks it strange if we don't, and so we
generally do, just in the morning--and evening.
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