He tried to look
away, and attend to the service, and for a time he partially succeeded,
although, seated as he was between the two triflers, who were
perpetually telegraphing to each other their jokes, he found it a
difficult task, and secretly he began to be much tickled.
At last the sermon commenced, and Llewellyn, who had imprisoned a
grasshopper in a paper cage, suddenly let it hop out. The first hop took
it to the top of the pew; the second perched it on the shoulder of the
stoutest lady. Duncan and Llewellyn tittered louder, and even Eric could
not resist a smile. But when the lady, feeling some irritation on her
shoulder, raised her hand, and the grasshopper took a frightened leap
into the centre of the green foliage which enwreathed her bonnet, none
of the three could stand it, and they burst into fits of laughter, which
they tried in vain to conceal by bending down their heads and cramming
their handkerchiefs into their mouths. Eric, having once given way,
enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the lady made matters worse by her
uneasy attempts to dislodge the unknown intruder, and discover the cause
of the tittering, which she could not help hearing.
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