And so far from our objecting to
these interpolations, we would feel that the story was not yet long
enough, and would rally her with: "Oh, but surely he said something else
as well. There was more than that, the first time you told it."
My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise her head and
look on at us over her glasses.
The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely, that during May we
used to go out on Saturday evenings after dinner to the 'Month of Mary'
devotions.
As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held very strict views
on "the deplorable untidiness of young people, which seems to be
encouraged in these days," my mother would first see that there was
nothing out of order in my appearance, and then we would set out for the
church. It was in these 'Month of Mary' services that I can remember
having first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn was not
merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it was, we had all of us a
right of entry; but, arranged upon the altar itself, inseparable from the
mysteries in whose celebration it was playing a part, it thrust in among
the tapers and the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to one
another horizontally in a stiff, festal scheme of decoration; and they
were made more lovely still by the scalloped outline of the dark leaves,
over which were scattered in profusion, as over a bridal train, little
clusters of buds of a dazzling whiteness.
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