“How late you are!” said Miss Pinnegar. “Mr. Witham was here till ten minutes ago.”
“Yes,” laughed Alvina. “I came down the yard and saw him. So I went back till he’d gone.”
Miss Pinnegar looked at her in displeasure:
“I suppose you know your own mind,” she said.
“How do you explain such behaviour?” said her father pettishly.
“I didn’t want to meet him,” she said.
The next evening was Saturday. Alvina had inherited Miss Frost’s task of attending to the Chapel flowers once a quarter. She had been round the gardens of her friends, and gathered the scarlet and hot yellow and purple flowers of August, asters, red stocks, tall Japanese sunflowers, coreopsis, geraniums. With these in her basket she slipped out towards evening, to the Chapel. She knew Mr. Calladine, the caretaker would not lock up till she had been.
The moment she got inside the Chapel—it was a big, airy, pleasant building—she heard hammering from the organ-loft, and saw the flicker of a candle. Some workman busy before Sunday. She shut the baize door behind her, and hurried across to the vestry, for vases, then out to the tap, for water. All was warm and still.
It was full early evening. The yellow light streamed through the side windows, the big stained-glass window at the end was deep and full of glowing colour, in which the yellows and reds were richest. Above in the organ-loft the hammering continued. She arranged her flowers in many vases, till the communion table was like the window, a tangle of strong yellow, and crimson, and purple, and bronze-green. She tried to keep the effect light and kaleidoscopic, an interplay of tossed pieces of strong, hot colour, vibrating and lightly intermingled. It was very gorgeous, for a communion table. But the day of white lilies was over.
Suddenly there was a terrific crash and bang and tumble, up in the organ-loft, followed by a cursing.