Appleby's Answer by Michael Innes Page B

The four children in the choir, whose faces now registered a sort of glazed terror, plunged pipingly into 302. The squire and his lady sang 302. The embrocation-woman, who appeared to be tone-deaf, shouted the words of 302. But the rector stuck to 203, and was splendidly supported by Captain Bulkington and his charges. Miss Pringle, finding her sympathies sundered, solved her problem by a silent opening and shutting of the mouth. After this the service ran on smoothly to the First Lesson, in which the squire, rather in the manner of a chairman of companies making an annual report to shareholders, communicated to his auditory various incidents in a battle between Abijah and Jeroboam. And then there was the Benedicite .
    But at this point a certain amount of disturbance made itself audible from without. In the main it was no more than a matter of the cheerful yelping of small dogs, and Miss Pringle remarked that the congregation took this in its stride. A little puppy-walking was going on in the interest of the local hunt; and it was conceivable that a number of the more polite children in this part of Wiltshire were regularly in the habit of contracting out of the obligation of divine service by undertaking this necessary part of a hunt’s activities round about 11 a.m. of a Sunday morning. But if the juvenile hounds hadn’t disturbed the worshippers they had certainly disturbed the Gloucester Old Spot, which was making a terrible row. They had also disturbed the pheasants, whose alarmed clack-clacking almost drowned the canticle. Or was it by a sinister pop-popping that the pheasants were disturbed? There could be no question as to the fact. Somebody was out shooting something – or indeed several persons were. Rabbits? Or was it a pigeon battue? Or were unspeakable ruffians even discharging illicit shot-guns at the sitting pheasants as they perched piously on those tombstones? These questions were clearly agitating the squire. The Gloucester Old Spot panicked; the puppies yelped, sequacious of as yet non-existent foxes; the pheasants clattered and whirred, fearful of leaving their little lives in air.
    But the congregation rose to the challenge, lustily exhorting the whales, the fowls of the air, the beasts and the cattle, to praise their Creator and magnify Him for ever.
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    And quite soon it was over – because the rector, evidently a sensible man, had decided against a sermon. So the tortoise took round a bag – with a gloomy reserve, but nevertheless as one acknowledging that here at last was an activity which at least made sense – and the rector, having pronounced the benediction, disappeared into the vestry, bearing the alms of the faithful with him. By the time that Miss Pringle had reached the door, however, he had reappeared in a quasi-secular character outside the church-porch, clearly for the purpose of conversing with anybody who appeared conversable. But the squire and his lady, together with the embrocation-woman, conscious of having been properly exact in the public discharge of their religious duties, were in full career for the manor house with the air of persons feeling they had earned their sherry. The choir, too, had not stood upon the order of its going; from round a bend in the village street fading but raucous laughter suggested that some wholesome recovery of nerve was going on. This left the organist – an elderly woman, flushed from her exertions, whom Miss Pringle at once distinguished as belonging to some intermediate order of society – together with Captain Bulkington and his pupils, and Miss Pringle herself.
    Miss Pringle thus stood in a position of some embarrassment. Probably the rector was as astounded as the tortoise had been at the appearance of a total stranger in his congregation, and only good manners were enabling him to conceal the fact. Miss Pringle, therefore, as she shook hands, felt that it was incumbent upon her to explain herself. But what