Page 296 - sons-and-lovers

handled; everything looked nice. Mrs. Morel had managed
wonderfully while her children were growing up, so that
nothing was out of place.
Miriam talked books a little. That was her unfailing
topic. But Mrs. Morel was not cordial, and turned soon to
Edgar.
At first Edgar and Miriam used to go into Mrs. Morel’s
pew. Morel never went to chapel, preferring the public-
house. Mrs. Morel, like a little champion, sat at the head of
her pew, Paul at the other end; and at first Miriam sat next
to him. Then the chapel was like home. It was a pretty place,
with dark pews and slim, elegant pillars, and flowers. And
the same people had sat in the same places ever since he was
a boy. It was wonderfully sweet and soothing to sit there for
an hour and a half, next to Miriam, and near to his mother,
uniting his two loves under the spell of the place of worship.
Then he felt warm and happy and religious at once. And af-
ter chapel he walked home with Miriam, whilst Mrs. Morel
spent the rest of the evening with her old friend, Mrs. Burns.
He was keenly alive on his walks on Sunday nights with Ed-
gar and Miriam. He never went past the pits at night, by the
lighted lamp-house, the tall black headstocks and lines of
trucks, past the fans spinning slowly like shadows, without
the feeling of Miriam returning to him, keen and almost
unbearable.
She did not very long occupy the Morels’ pew. Her father
took one for themselves once more. It was under the little
gallery, opposite the Morels’. When Paul and his mother
came in the chapel the Leivers’s pew was always empty. He