Mark was sorry that she felt like
that toward him, because she seemed unhappy, and in his desire for
everybody to be happy he would have liked to proclaim how suddenly and
unexpectedly happiness may come. As a sister of the Vicar of the parish,
she went to church regularly, but Mark did not think that she was there
except in body. He once looked across at her open prayer book during the
_Magnificat_, and noticed that she was reading the Tables of Kindred and
Affinity. Now, Mark knew from personal experience that when one is
reduced to reading the Tables of Kindred and Affinity it argues a mind
untouched by the reality of worship. In his own case, when he sat beside
his uncle and aunt in the dreary Slowbridge church of their choice, it
had been nothing more than a sign of his own inward dreariness to read
the Tables of Kindred and Affinity or speculate upon the Paschal full
moons from the year 2200 to the year 2299 inclusive. But St. Margaret's,
Meade Cantorum, was a different church from St. Jude's, Slowbridge, and
for Esther Ogilvie to ignore the joyfulness of worshipping there in
order to ponder idly the complexities of Golden Numbers and Dominical
Letters could not be ascribed to inward dreariness. Besides, she wasn't
dreary.
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