She is the author of several small works of devotion, and of a book of verse, entitled (unless my memory misleads me) Eglantine." He uttered all this not only with deliberation, but with something that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager deliberation.
He had, I think, a vague memory in his head of the detectives in the detective stories, who always sternly require that nothing should be kept back.
"I then proceeded," he went on, with the same maddening conscientiousness of manner, "to Mr Carr (not Mr James Carr, of course; Mr Robert Carr) who is temporarily assisting our organist, and having consulted with him (on the subject of a choir boy who is accused, I cannot as yet say whether justly or not, of cutting holes in the organ pipes), I finally dropped in upon a Dorcas meeting at the house of Miss Brett.

The Dorcas meetings are usually held at the vicarage, but my wife being unwell, Miss Brett, a newcomer in our village, but very active in church work, had very kindly consented to hold them.

The Dorcas society is entirely under my wife's management as a rule, and except for Miss Brett, who, as I say, is very active, I scarcely know any members of it.
I had, however, promised to drop in on them, and I did so.
"When I arrived there were only four other maiden ladies with Miss Brett, but they were sewing very busily.

It is very difficult, of course, for any person, however strongly impressed with the necessity in these matters of full and exact exposition of the facts, to remember and repeat the actual details of a conversation, particularly a conversation which (though inspired with a most worthy and admirable zeal for good work) was one which did not greatly impress the hearer's mind at the time and was in fact--er--mostly about socks.

I can, however, remember distinctly that one of the spinster ladies (she was a thin person with a woollen shawl, who appeared to feel the cold, and I am almost sure she was introduced to me as Miss James) remarked that the weather was very changeable.