This was also the first time that he had attended a church
service in nine years, except for mass at St. Patrick's, which
he regarded not as church, but as beauty. He felt tremendously
reformed, set upon new paths of virtue and achievement. He
thought slightingly of those lonely bachelors, Morton and
Mittyford, Ph. D. They just didn't know what it meant to a
fellow to be going to church with a girl like Miss Nelly, he
reflected, as he re brushed his hair after breakfast.
He walked proudly beside her, and made much of the gentility of
entering the church, as one of the well-to-do and intensely
bathed congregation. He even bowed to an almost painfully
washed and brushed young usher with gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
He thought scornfully of his salad days, when he had bowed to
the Brass-button Man at the Nickelorion.
The church interior was as comfortable as Sunday-morning toast
and marmalade--half a block of red carpet in the aisles; shiny
solid-oak pews, gorgeous stained-glass windows, and a general
polite creaking of ladies' best stays and gentlemen's stiff
shirt-bosoms, and an odor of the best cologne and moth-balls.
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