Shining Ferry - Arthur Quiller-Couch

"Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,
Thanks for mercies past receive;
Pardon all their faults confessing;
Time that's lost may all retrieve;
May Thy children
Ne'er again Thy Spirit grieve."

The children, released from the dull strain of watching the clock, sang with spirit. Hester played on, inattentive to the words. At the end, without considering what she did, she pressed down the chords of the 'Amen,' and the singers joined in, all unaware of transgressing.

In the silence that followed she suddenly remembered her instructions to omit the word, and sat for a moment flushed and confused. But the deed was done. The children stood shuffling their feet, awaiting the signal of dismissal.

"You may go," she said. "We will do better to-morrow."

When their voices had died away down the road she closed the harmonium softly, and fell to walking to and fro, musing, tidying up the schoolroom by fits and starts. She wanted to sit down and have a good cry; but always as the tears came near to flowing she fell to work afresh and checked them. Not until the room looked neat again did she remember that she was hungry. Nuncey had cooked a pasty for her, and she fetched it from the cupboard, where it lay in a basket covered by a spotless white cloth. As she did so, her eyes fell on a damp spot on the floor, where, after bandaging Mr. Sam, she had carefully washed out the stain of his blood.

She looked at her hands. They were clean; and yet having set down the basket on the desk, and turned her stool so that she might not see the spot on the floor, she continued to stare at them, and from them to the white cloth. A while she stood thus, irresolute, still listening to the bees zooming against the pane. Then with a sudden effort of will she walked out and across the yard, to the pump in the far corner.

She was stooping to raise the pump handle, but straightened herself up again at the sound—as it seemed to her—of a muffled sob.

She looked behind her and around. The playground was empty, the air across its gravelled surface quivering under the noonday heat. She listened.

Two long minutes passed before the sound was repeated; and this time she knew it for the sob of a child. It came from behind an angle of the building which hid a strip of the playground from view. She ran thither at once, and as she turned the corner her eyes fell on little Clem.