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‘I’m none as ormin’ as I look, seest ta.’

Fanny did not think her prospective mother-in-law looked at all orming, so the speech was unnecessary.

‘I towd him mysen,’ said Mrs. Goodall, ”Er’s held back all this long, let ‘er stop as ‘er is. ‘E’d none ha’ had thee for my tellin’–tha hears. No, ‘e’s a fool, an’ I know it. I says to him, ‘Tha looks a man, doesn’t ter, at thy age, goin’ an’ openin’ to her when ter hears her scrat’ at th’ gate, after she’s done gallivantin’ round wherever she’d a mind. That looks rare an’ soft.’ But it’s no use o’ any talking: he answered that letter o’ thine and made his own bad bargain.’

But in spite of the old woman’s anger, she was also flattered at Fanny’s coming back to Harry. For Mrs. Goodall was impressed by Fanny–a woman of her own match. And more than this, everybody knew that Fanny’s Aunt Kate had left her two hundred pounds: this apart from the girl’s savings.

So there was high tea in Princes Street when Harry came home black from work, and a rather acrid odour of cordiality, the vixen Jinny darting in to say vulgar things. Of course Jinny lived in a house whose garden end joined the paternal garden. They were a clan who stuck together, these Goodalls.

It was arranged that Fanny should come to tea again on the Sunday, and the wedding was discussed. It should take place in a fortnight’s time at Morley Chapel. Morley was a hamlet on the edge of the real country, and in its little Congregational Chapel Fanny and Harry had first met.

What a creature of habit he was! He was still in the choir of Morley Chapel–not very regular. He belonged just because he had a tenor voice, and enjoyed singing. Indeed his solos were only spoilt to local fame because when he sang he handled his aitches so hopelessly.

‘And I saw ‘eaven hopened
And be’old, a wite ‘orse-‘

This was one of Harry’s classics, only surpassed by the fine outburst of his heaving:

‘Hangels–hever bright an’ fair-‘

It was a pity, but it was inalterable. He had a good voice, and he sang with a certain lacerating fire, but his pronunciation made it all funny. And nothing could alter him.

So he was never heard save at cheap concerts and in the little, poorer chapels. The others scoffed.

Now the month was September, and Sunday was Harvest Festival at Morley Chapel, and Harry was singing solos. So that Fanny was to go to afternoon service, and come home to a grand spread of Sunday tea with him. Poor Fanny! One of the most wonderful afternoons had been a Sunday afternoon service, with her cousin Luther at her side, Harvest Festival in Morley Chapel. Harry had sung solos then–ten years ago. She remembered his pale blue tie, and the purple asters and the great vegetable marrows in which he was framed, and her cousin Luther at her side, young, clever, come down from London, where he was getting on well, learning his Latin and his French and German so brilliantly.

However, once again it was Harvest Festival at Morley Chapel, and once again, as ten years before, a soft, exquisite September day, with the last roses pink in the cottage gardens, the last dahlias crimson, the last sunflowers yellow. And again the little old chapel was a bower, with its famous sheaves of corn and corn-plaited pillars, its great bunches of grapes, dangling like tassels from the pulpit corners, its marrows and potatoes and pears and apples and damsons, its purple asters and yellow Japanese sunflowers. Just as before, the red dahlias round the pillars were dropping, weak-headed among the oats. The place was crowded and hot, the plates of tomatoes seemed balanced perilously on the gallery front, the Rev. Enderby was weirder than ever to look at, so long and emaciated and hairless.