Doolittle, a cold night, sir.«

»Coolish; a tedious spell on't.«

»What, looking at our church, ha! it looks well by moonlight; how the tin of the cupola glistens. I warrant you, the dome of the other St. Paul's never shines so in the smoke of London.«

»It is a pretty meeting-house to look on,« returned Hiram, »and I believe that Monshure Ler Quow and Mr. Penguilliam will allow it.«

»Sairtainlee!« exclaimed the complaisant Frenchman, »it ees ver fine.«

»I thought the Monshure would say so. The last molasses that we had was excellent good. It isn't likely that you have any more of it on hand?«

»Ah! oui; ees, sair,« returned Monsieur Le Quoi, with a slight shrug of his shoulder, and a trifling grimace, »dere is more. I feel ver happi dat you love eet. I hope dat Madame Dooleet' is in good 'ealth.«

»Why, so as to be stirring,« said Hiram. – »The Squire hasn't finished the plans for the inside of the meeting-house yet?«

»No – no – no,« returned Richard, speaking quickly, but making a significant pause between each negative – »it requires reflection. There is a great deal of room to fill up, and I am afraid we shall not know how to dispose of it to advantage. There will be a large vacant spot around the pulpit, which I do not mean to place against the wall, like a sentry-box stuck up on the side of a fort.«

»It is ruleable to put the deacons' box under the pulpit,« said Hiram; and then, as if he had ventured too much, he added, »but there's different fashions in different countries.«

»That there is,« cried Benjamin; »now, in running down the coast of Spain and Portingal, you may see a nunnery stuck out on every head-land, with more steeples and outriggers, such as dog-vanes and weather-cocks, than you'll find aboard of a three-masted schooner. If-so-be that a well-built church is wanting, Old England, after all, is the country to go to, after your models and fashion-pieces. As to Paul's, thof I've never seen it, being that it's a long way up town from Radcliffe-highway and the docks, yet every body knows that it's the grandest place in the world. Now, I've no opinion but this here church over there, is as like one end of it, as a grampus is to a whale; and that's only a small difference in bulk. Mounsheer Ler Quaw here, has been in foreign parts, and thof that is not the same as having been at home, yet he must have seen churches in France too, and can form a small idee of what a church should be: now, I ask the Mounsheer to his face, if it is not a clever little thing, taking it by and large?«

»It ees ver apropos of saircumstonce,« said the Frenchman – »ver judgement – but it is in de Catholique country dat dey build de – vat you call – ah-a-ah-ha – la grande cathédrale – de big church. St. Paul Londre, is ver fine; ver bootiful; ver grand – vat you call beeg; but, Monsieur Ben, pardonnez moi, it is no vort so much as Notre Dame« –

»Ha! Mounsheer, what is that you say?« cried Benjamin – »St. Paul's Church not worth so much as a damn! mayhap you may be thinking, too, that the Royal Billy isn't so good a ship as the Billy de Paris; but she would have lick'd two of her, any day, and in all weathers.«

As Benjamin had assumed a very threatening kind of attitude, flourishing an arm, with a bunch at the end of it, that was half as big as Monsieur Le Quoi's head, Richard thought it time to interpose his authority.

»Hush, Benjamin, hush,« he said; »you both misunderstand Monsieur Le Quoi, and forget yourself. – But here comes Mr. Grant, and the service will commence. Let us go in.«

The Frenchman, who received Benjamin's reply with a well-bred good humour, that would not admit of any feeling but pity for the other's ignorance, bowed in acquiescence, and followed his companion.

Hiram and the Major-Domo brought up the rear, the latter grumbling, as he entered the building –

»If-so-be that the King of France had so much as a house to live in, that would lay alongside of Paul's, one might put up with their jaw. It's more than flesh and blood can bear, to hear a Frenchman run down an English church in this manner. Why, Squire Doolittle, I've been at the whipping of two of them in one day – clean built, snug frigates, with standing-royals and them new-fashioned cannonades on their quarters – such as, if they had only Englishmen aboard of them, would have fout the devil.«

With this ominous word in his mouth, Benjamin entered the church!

 

 

Chapter XI

»And fools, who came to scoff, remain'd to pray.«

Goldsmith, »The Deserted Village,« l. 179.

 

Notwithstanding the united labours of Richard and Benjamin, the ›long-room‹ was but an extremely in-artificial temple. Benches, made in the coarsest manner, and entirely with a view to usefulness, were arranged in rows, for the reception of the congregation, while a rough, unpainted box, was placed against the wall, in the centre of the length of the apartment, as an apology for a pulpit. Something like a reading-desk was in front of this rostrum, and a small mahogany table, from the mansion-house, covered with a spotless damask cloth, stood a little on one side, by the way of an altar. Branches of pines and hemlocks were stuck in each of the fissures that offered, in the unseasoned, and hastily completed wood-work, of both the building and its furniture; while festoons and hieroglyphics met the eye, in vast profusion, along the brown sides of the scratch-coated walls. As the room was only lighted by some ten or fifteen miserable candles, and the windows were without shutters, it would have been but a dreary, cheerless place for the solemnities of a Christmas-eve, had not the large fire, that was crackling at each end of the apartment, given an air of cheerfulness to the scene, by throwing an occasional glare of light through the vistas of bushes and faces.

The two sexes were separated by an area in the centre of the room, immediately before the pulpit, and a few benches lined this space, that were occupied by the principal personages of the village and its vicinity. This distinction was rather a gratuitous concession, made by the poorer and less polished part of the population, than a right claimed by the favoured few. One bench was occupied by the party of Judge Temple, including his daughter; and, with the exception of Dr.