So together they wrote a letter accepting the post, and a week later left their old home, with all its memories and associations, to settle in a fifth storey dwelling amongst the skylights.
Rosalie felt her prayer in part was answered. They were not to be separated after all. Hard as the work might be, it meant freedom and the company she loved. She was content, went to the temple, knelt humbly and returned thanks. Then she went on praying for a voice with a faith born of simplicity and her own idea of God.
One day a priest found her praying there. He inquired the cause. Like the stranger, he was not long in finding it. He put his hand upon her head, and blessed her in the name of the Serpent’s three tails. Then he went back to the priests’ lodgings, and kept his story for supper. He was a jolly man, of the earth earthy, and his idea of the Serpent was that his golden coils were lucrative. The priest was not bad-hearted; he was simply mediocre. But he had a sense of humour—and who, indeed, but the soured and stupid have not?—and the idea of a girl kneeling by the altar railings (he had never seen her, as on that one unique occasion, step beyond) praying persistently to be allowed to talk when plainly she was physically beyond it tickled his sense of funniness. He laughed and shook till the tears ran down his face.
“And she believes it—that’s the biggest joke,” he cried. “Believes that if she prays long enough the Serpent will weary or turn merciful, and fulfil her prayer.”
“According to our history of the past, with its wonders and miracles, that is not so impossible as it seems,” said one, more thoughtfully.
“She’d best jump back a hundred year or two, and cap one miracle by another, then,” remarked a third.
“What did you say to her, James Peter?” asked a fourth.
“Oh, I blessed her, and prayed to the Serpent to look serious, and the request was granted. ’Twas a miracle on a small scale, I can assure you. I could have roared right out.”
“What is she like to look at?” put in a fifth.
“Pretty—sad-looking—just the sort of woman to get an idea. That is the sort we can’t afford to quarrel with. They tip so handsomely on Sundays.”