"Kneel down and hold up your hand!" urged Noel in an eager whisper.
So Inez knelt down and took off her hat and held up her hand very solemnly.
"Here I vow, O Jesus Christ, to be Your servant and do what You tell me for ever and ever. Amen."
There was silence in the church. Noel was kneeling by her side. He felt as if something tremendous was taking place.
And he was not far from wrong, for Inez was in dead earnest, and in after-days when she became quite an old woman with grandchildren of her own around her, she would tell them of the first stepping-stone towards the Better Land on which she placed her feet, in that quiet little country church, on a summer's evening in August. And then after silence, Inez spoke to her Saviour again:
"I'm sorry I've been such a wicked girl, but Mrs. Inglefield told me You had died for wicked people to forgive them, so please forgive me. And make me never want to kick or scratch or bite Julia again."
Then she got up on her feet and looked at Noel in a solemn, satisfied kind of way.
"There, that's done, and I can never go back! I've been wanting to do it ever since the picnic, but I didn't seem to know how. And when Dad and Mother come home they'll find their daughter an angel-child, who almost smiles when she's ill-treated, and is almost too good to live! And I shall end my days by being a missionaryess, out in the heathen countries where lions take you off to their dens."
Noel looked at her admiringly.
"And," went on Inez, as she took his hand and came out of the church into the sunshiny churchyard, "now you'll never be able to say that the Devil lives in my house any more."