The two schools had
their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, until the Abbey Church
getting rather empty, through the falling-off of the congregation, who
were inveigled to the Heresy-shop in the lower town, the Doctor induced
the Misses Finucane to bring their pretty little flock downstairs; and
the young ladies' bonnets make a tolerable show in the rather vacant
aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family, except the
statues of defunct baronets and their ladies: there is Sir Poyntz
Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a square beard opposite his
wife in a ruff: a very fat lady, the Dame Rebecca Clavering, in
alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven by two little blue-veined angels, who
seem to have a severe task--and so forth. How well in after life Pen
remembered those effigies, and how often in youth he scanned them as the
Doctor was grumbling the sermon from the pulpit, and Smirke's mild head
and forehead curl peered over the great prayer-book in the desk!
The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church; their servants had a
pew, so had the Doctor's, so had Wapshot's, and those of Misses
Finucane's establishment, three maids and a very nice-looking young man
in a livery.
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