The bells of the Church of the Perpetual Sinner chimed calling the congregation to the front doors of the sanctuary, the littlest dogman hunched like a beggar in the bushes that circled the front lawn, the hedges and shrubbery glistening with bluebells and marigolds. Standing with his back to those congregated, his surplice tattered and threadbare, the rector’s assistant held out a roll of paper on which was written in black inky block-letters, SAY AMEN TO THE SINNER, FOR THE SIN IS IN YOU, NOT I. The rector’s assistant, the scroll cinched under his arm, strode through the front doors, a doltish smirk on his face, the congregated turning tail and rushing headlong home, all but for the littlest dogman, who, entangled in a latticework of bluebells and marigolds, let go with a loud tittering guffaw.
The great Migrateurs’ Obrist sat at the back of the church paring his fingernails with a whetstone whet pocketknife. As he had no patience for sanctimonious sermonizing, which came by way of Monsignor Fontenay-sous-Bois’ ecclesiastic gibbering, he listened to the mice gnawing at the pew-boards beneath his well-creased trousers, thinking of ways to turn old slat-board into window shims.
The great Migrateurs’ Obrist sat at the back of the church paring his fingernails with a whetstone whet pocketknife. As he had no patience for sanctimonious sermonizing, which came by way of Monsignor Fontenay-sous-Bois’ ecclesiastic gibbering, he listened to the mice gnawing at the pew-boards beneath his well-creased trousers, thinking of ways to turn old slat-board into window shims.
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