The bells of the old Raveloe
church were ringing the cheerful peal which told that the morning
service was ended; and out of the arched doorway in the tower came
slowly, retarded by friendly greetings and questions, the richer
parishioners who had chosen this bright Sunday morning as eligible for
church-going. It was the rural fashion of that time for the more
important members of the congregation to depart first, while their
humbler neighbours waited and looked on, stroking their bent heads
or dropping their curtsies to any large ratepayer who turned to notice
them.
Foremost among these advancing groups of well-clad people, there
are some whom we shall recognize, in spite of Time, who has laid his
hand on them all. The tall blond man of forty is not much changed in
feature from the Godfrey Cass of six-and-twenty: he is only fuller
in flesh, and has only lost the indefinable look of youth- a loss
which is marked even when the eye is undulled and the wrinkles are not
yet come. Perhaps the pretty woman, not much younger than he, who is
leaning on his arm, is more changed than her husband: the lovely bloom
that used to be always on her cheek now comes but fitfully, with the
fresh morning air or with some strong surprise; yet to all who love
human faces best for what they tell of human experience, Nancy's
beauty has a heightened interest. Often the soul is ripened into
fuller goodness while age has spread an ugly film, so that mere
glances can never divine the preciousness of the fruit.
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