"Cicely?"—briskly. "I think she's gone down to the church to practice the new Te Deum. I have not seen her for some time; you'll surely find her there, or up at the school-house."
"No; I've tried both unsuccessfully. Old Crofts said she had returned home. I can't imagine where she has hidden herself."
However, some five minutes later he runs her to earth in the old day-nursery, where she has taken refuge from the prevailing bustle to copy some music.
"May I come in?" he asks wistfully. "Shall I be as much in the way here as I seem to be everywhere else, Cicely?"
"Not it you sit quite still and do not expect to be entertained," she answers composedly. "I have to make out five copies of this wretched Te Deum before afternoon practice. Oh, dear, I do wish amateur organists would be content with Mozart, Haydn, and Co., and not force their compositions on the public! It is weary work."
"How neatly you do it! What clever fingers you have, Miss Deane!" he says, throwing himself into a chair, and leaning his arms on the table.
She puts a slim finger to her lips in warning reply.
Twenty minutes pass by in profound silence. Everard takes up a pen, for which he finds swift employment. To his horror, the young man becomes aware that he has been illustrating the margin of one of Miss Deane's finished copies with skeleton hunting-sketches, adding arms and legs to the crotchets and quavers, giving features to the open notes.
"What are you trying to do, Jack?" she asks, leaning across the table to reach a book, and steadying herself with the help of his bent shoulder.
"Trying to do?" he repeats, one hand quickly veiling the work of desecration, the other imprisoning his companion's. "I am trying to make love to you, Cicely. Is it any good?"