But soon the last blessed period of the day would come, the half hour devoted to religious instruction. She found a pleasure in this task, for she loved to hear the little children at their prayers. Sometimes she would ask them to say for her the little prayer she had taught them:
"O God, I offer up this prayer for the poor intentions of Thy servant Rebecca Kerr, that they may be fulfilled unto the glory of Thy Holy Will. And that being imperfect, she may approach to Thy Perfection through the Grace and Mercy of Jesus Christ, Our Lord."
She would feel a certain happiness for a short space after this, at least while the boisterous business of taking leave of the school was going forward. But once upon the road she would be meeting people who always stared at her strangely, and passing houses with squinting windows.... Then would come a heavy sense of depression, which might be momentarily dispelled by the appearance of John Brennan either coming or going upon the road. For a while she had considered this happening coincidental, but of late it had been borne in upon her that it was very curious he should appear daily at the same time.... The silly boy, and he with his grand purpose before him.... She would smile upon him very pleasantly, and fall into chat sometimes, but only for a few minutes. She looked upon herself as being ever so much wiser. And she thought it queer that he should find an attraction for his eyes in her form as it moved before him down the road. She always fancied that she felt low and mean within herself while his eyes were upon her.... But he would be forever coming out of his mother's cottage to meet her thus upon the road.
After dinner in the house of Sergeant McGoldrick she would betake herself to her little room. It would be untidy after the hurry in which she had left it, and now she would set about putting it to rights. This would occupy her half an hour or more. Then there would be a few letters to be written, to her people away in Donegal and to some of the companions of her training college days. She kept up a more or less regular correspondence with about half-a-dozen of these girls. Her letters were all after the frivolous style of their schooldays. To all of them she imparted the confidence that she had met "a very nice fellow" here in Garradrimna, but that the place was so lonely, and how there was "nothing like a girl friend."
"Ah, Anna," she would write, or "Lily" or "Lena," "There's surely nothing after all like a girl friend."
After tea she would put on one of her tidiest hats, and taking the letters with her go towards the Post Office of Garradrimna. This was a torture, for always the eyes of the old, bespectacled maid were upon her, looking into her mind, as she stood waiting for her stamps outside the ink-stained counter. And, further, she always felt that the doors and windows of the village were forever filled with eyes as she went by them. Her neck and face would burn until she took the road that led out past the old castle of the De Lacys. There was a footpath which took one to the west gate of the demesne of the Moores. The Honorable Reginald Moore was the modern lord of Garradrimna. It was this way she would go, meeting all kinds of stragglers from the other end of the parish. People she did not know and who did not know her, queer, dark men coming into Garradrimna through the high evening in quest of porter.
"Fine evening, miss!" they would say.
Once on the avenue her little walk became a golden journey for Ulick always met her when she came this way. It was their custom to meet here or on The Road of the Dead. But this was their favorite spot, where the avenue led far into the quiet woods. A scurrying-away of rabbits through the undergrowth would announce their approach to one another.
Many were the happy talks they had here, of books and of decent life beyond the boorishness of Garradrimna. She had given him The Poems of Tennyson in exchange for The Daffodil Fields. Tastefully illuminated in red ink on the fly-leaf he had found her "favorite lines" from Tennyson, whom she considered "exquisite":
"Glitter like a storm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."