“Sister, will you please lead us?” the voice insisted. A pause followed, then the voice came again—“I thought I saw Sister Rose. Is she not among us?” it demanded.
Very stiffly and silently Julie arose, and tiptoeing down the steps, fled away in a panic toward the safety of her own home. Hastening desperately through the streets, in a few breathless moments she reached the haven of her own back door. With hands that shook, she inserted her key, and whisking inside, slammed the door and locked it.
Safe within the shelter of her own home, her own roof to cover her and her door fast locked against the outside world, she leaned against the wall and panted. “Oh, you fool! You awful little fool!” she cried in passionate self-contempt. “But—but I reckon I oughtn’t to say ‘fool,’” she faltered.
After a moment, she moved over and turned on the light, and then snapped it off again and stood uncertainly in the dark. She was dreadfully afraid some members of the congregation might stop to question her about her strange disappearance; but if her house was in darkness, they would conclude that she had gone to bed.
This was a vain hope, however. She had not been home very long, sitting cowering in the dark, when a sudden knock came, and a voice cried, “Julie—Aw, Julie!”
Julie waited a hesitant moment, but the voice came again and the knock insisted. It was Mrs. Sam Wicket. When she called, people had to answer and doors had to open. With fingers that were still tremulous, Julie turned the key. Three faces peered in at her, sharp with inquiry, in the flare of electricity that Julie turned on again. Mrs. Wicket had in tow her old aunt, Mrs. Stover, and Miss Mary Humphries also. It was a delegation of inquiry.
“Well,” Mrs. Wicket announced. “I didn’t b’lieve you’d gone to bed this early.”
“Walk in,” Julie said, with dutiful hospitality, which was superfluous, for, headed by Mrs. Wicket, the three were already trooping through to the sitting-room.
“Here, I can’t see a thing. Where’s that hateful button? There, now!” Mrs. Wicket flooded the neat little room with light. “Now, then, Julie, we stopped by to see what was the matter with you,” she announced. She was a thin woman, with dark and snappy eyes, very precise in her brown dress, to which there was not a superfluous ruffle, as there was not an extra ounce of flesh on her spare body. “No’m, thank you, I always prefer a stiff-backed chair; you take the rocker yourself,” she interpolated to Miss Mary Humphries.
Miss Mary sat down in the patent plush rocker,—one that Julie’s father had bought in the old days,—and her square figure firmly established there and her hands clasped upon her Gospel Hymn book, she stared at Julie. “What made you slip away like that, Julie?” she demanded.