Sunday School
Rushton and Company, and two and a half per cent. of the profits for himself.
Mr Belcher now replaced the collecting card on the table, and taking up one of the hymn books, gave out the words and afterwards conducted the singing, flourishing one fat hand in the air and holding the book in the other.
As the last strains of the music died away, he closed his eyes and a sweet smile widened his mouth, as he stretched forth his right hand, open, palm down, with the fingers close together, and said:
'Let us pray.'
With much shuffling of feet everyone knelt down. Hunter's lanky form was distributed over a very large area; his body lay along one of the benches, his legs and feet sprawled over the floor, and his huge hands clasped the sides of the seat. His eyes were tightly closed and there was an expression of the most intense misery in his long face.
Mrs Starvem, Ruth Easton's former mistress, was so fat that she knew if she once knelt down she would never be able to get up again, so compromised by sitting on the extreme edge of her chair, resting her elbows on the back of the seat in front of her, and burying her face in her hands. It was a very large face, but her hands were capacious enough to receive it.
In a seat at the back of the hall knelt a pale faced, weary looking little woman about thirty-six years of age, very shabbily dressed, who had come in during the singing. This was Mrs White, the caretaker, Bert White's mother. When her husband died, the Committee of the Chapel, out of charity, gave her this work, for which they paid her six shillings a week. Of course they could not offer her full employment; the idea was that she could get other work as well, charing and things of that kind, and do the Chapel work in between. There wasn't much to do: just the heating furnace to light when necessary; the Chapel, committee rooms, classrooms and Sunday School to sweep and scrub out occasionally; the hymn books to collect, etc. Whenever they had a tea meeting—which was, on an average, about twice a week—there were the trestle tables to fix up, the chairs to arrange, the table to set out, and then, supervised by Miss Didlum or some other lady, the tea to make. There was rather a lot to do on the days following these functions: the washing up; the tables
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