The doctor, recently appointed to the district, was a Roman Catholic of plebeian antecedents, which reduced the resident gentry of Ballymoy to the Quinns, a bank manager, and the Rector, Canon Beecher.

A few farmers, Mr.Stack's gamekeeper, and the landlady of the Imperial Hotel, made up the rest of the congregation.
The service was not of a very attractive or inspiriting kind.

Canon Beecher--his title was a purely honorary one, not even involving the duty of preaching in the unpretending building which, in virtue of some forgotten history, was dignified with the name of Killinacoff Cathedral--read slowly with somewhat ponderous emphasis.

His thirty years in Holy Orders had slightly hardened an originally luscious Dublin brogue, but there remained a certain gentle aspiration of the _d's_ and _t's_, and a tendency to omit the labial consonants altogether.

He read an immense number of prayers, gathering, as it seemed to Hyacinth, the longest ones from the four corners of the Prayer-Book.