Fire leaped into Mona's cheeks.
"I won't have Adette Clamart doing that," she protested indignantly. "If your eye needs kissing——"
Peter was wiping it with the back of his hand.
"That's right, wipe it away," she encouraged spitefully. "I hate her!"
Peter said nothing. But he saw Mona's lovely eyes flash in Adette's direction when they were seated on one of the wooden benches in the little church. Adette smiled mischievously and nodded her head, but Mona made no response except to tilt her pretty chin a little higher in the air and look straight ahead of her to the platform where Father Albanel was ready to begin the service.
The little missioner's face was even rosier and jollier than yesterday, it seemed to Peter, and he was smiling and nodding and rubbing his hands as if this particular hour was the happiest of his life.
Peter, looking secretly about him, was impressed by the fact that this was unlike any other Sunday meeting he had ever attended. He missed the serious and almost awesome solemnity of the other similar occasions he could remember. Here everyone was free and easy and refreshingly happy. Even Simon McQuarrie's emotionless face was more gentle, and he smiled when he saw Peter, and a ripple of laughter ran easily through the gathering when young Telesphore crowed delightedly and waved his arms in an embracing greeting to all about him. Then came the tinkle of a bell, and suddenly the room was very quiet.
What happened after that was like a dream to Peter, and it seemed constantly to be awakening something new and happier within him. He had never heard singing like that which filled the little church. Mona's voice was clear and soft as the crested warbler's song which he loved; and when she looked at him and whispered, "Sing, Peter," his courage came to him, and a little at a time he lifted his voice until his boyish tenor rose clearly at her side. When they sat down she was nearer to him, so near that her wonderful white dress crumpled close against him and a tress of her shining hair fell upon his hand.
"I love your singing, Peter," she whispered to him again.
His heart beat fast and his hand twitched nervously under the silken caress of her hair. Until now—this hour when they sat so close together in the church—he had not felt the deeper stir of that emotion which was growing in him. Surreptitiously his fingers closed about the soft tress of hair. Mona did not know it, no one knew it but himself, and he looked straight ahead while his heart beat still faster and the warm thrill of his secret sent the blood into his face.