Perhaps
even a temperance meeting was a change in the dreary monotony of rural
life at Warpington. Many of the faces bore the imprint of this monotony,
Rachel thought, as she refused the conspicuous front seat pointed out to
her by Mrs. Gresley, and sat down near the door with Hester.
Dick, who had been finishing his cigarette outside, entered a moment
later, and stood in the gangway, entirely filling it up, his eye
travelling over the assembly, and, as Rachel well knew, looking for her.
Presently he caught sight of her, wedged in four or five deep by the
last arrivals. There was a vacant space between her and the wall, but it
was apparently inaccessible. Entirely disregarding the anxious
church-wardens who were waving him forward, Dick disappeared among the
young men at the back, and Rachel thought no more of him until a large
Oxford shoe descended quietly out of space upon the empty seat near her,
and Dick, who had persuaded the young men to give him foot-room on their
seats, and had stepped over the high backs of several "school forms,"
sat down beside her.
It was neatly done, and Rachel could not help smiling. But the thought
darted through her mind that Dick was the kind of man who, somehow or
other, would succeed where he meant to succeed, and would marry the
woman he intended to marry.
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