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xlvi PHILIP
often took us to the early nine o'clock service in the old parish
church of Kensington. It is not the present church, but the old
brick edifice which still stands there for some of us, with its square
tower and its flagstaff and the pen-like pews and galleries and the
high hassocks, through which the straws used to protrude, and with
the carved tomb of the Earls of Warwick in the dark corner,
opposite our pew.
The archdeacon did not read the service in the mornings ;
there was a curate who seemed to us only next to him in importance,
and for whom my father had a great liking. The
charity boys in their quaint dresses used to troop in with
tramplings of little thick boots, and shout the responses somewhat
promiscuously.
It was darkish, dampish, there were long streaks of light starting
from the windows. The picture of Philip in church always
seems to me to be a picture of our pew in St. Mary Abbott's
as it was in my youth ; full of peaceful organ notes and hopes
which have been unfulfilled. But I think the realities, and even
many of the disappointments of life have been better than ever
were the childish dreams of those early days.
A. I. R.