Norman Douglas was, as Susan had often vowed crisply, nothing more or
less than a "pagan." But he was a rampantly patriotic pagan, and when
the significance of what Mr. Pryor was saying fully dawned on him,
Norman Douglas suddenly went berserk. With a positive roar he bounded to
his feet in his side pew, facing the audience, and shouted in tones of
thunder:
"Stop--stop--STOP that abominable prayer! What an abominable prayer!"
Every head in the church flew up. A boy in khaki at the back gave a
faint cheer. Mr. Meredith raised a deprecating hand, but Norman was past
caring for anything like that. Eluding his wife's restraining grasp, he
gave one mad spring over the front of the pew and caught the unfortunate
Whiskers-on-the-moon by his coat collar. Mr. Pryor had not "stopped"
when so bidden, but he stopped now, perforce, for Norman, his long red
beard literally bristling with fury, was shaking him until his bones
fairly rattled, and punctuating his shakes with a lurid assortment of
abusive epithets.
"You blatant beast!"--shake--"You malignant carrion"--shake--"You
pig-headed varmint!"--shake--"you putrid pup"--shake--"you
pestilential parasite"--shake--"you--Hunnish scum"--shake--"you
indecent reptile--you--you--" Norman choked for a moment. Everybody
believed that the next thing he would say, church or no church, would be
something that would have to be spelt with asterisks; but at that moment
Norman encountered his wife's eye and he fell back with a thud on Holy
Writ.
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