“Muriel, I’d rather you should forget—that we should never speak again—about what I’ve told you this afternoon.”
Muriel took up an illustrated paper from a side table.
“Hats,” she announced sententiously, “will be worn small this winter, and skirts mercifully not quite so tight. Have you noticed Mrs. Clinton? She’s positively indecent. I blush scarlet if I’m with a man when I meet her.”
Anne laughed, though there were tears in her eyes.
“Muriel,” she said, “you’re the silliest and dearest little elf in Christendom.”
II
Muriel made more than one further journey to the Oratory to explain matters to St. Joseph, on each occasion presenting that delightful saint with a candle. The first time—subsequent to Anne’s confession—that she went to the Oratory she gave him two, one being for thanksgiving.
Also she invited Father O’Sullivan to tea on an occasion when Tommy, by Muriel’s suggestion, had taken Anne to skate at Prince’s.
Father O’Sullivan was a short, stoutish man, with grizzled hair, small twinkling eyes, and a mouth that had the kindliest twist of a smile imaginable. To know Father O’Sullivan for an hour was to love him. To know him for longer was to love him better. Muriel had known him from her babyhood.
This afternoon, having invited him to tea, she plied him with cakes and quince sandwiches, which latter his soul adored, and talked in a gay [Pg 222]and inconsequent fashion of airy nothings, to which Father O’Sullivan responded after the manner of Irishmen, be they priests or laymen.