At Lucy's words she flushed a little.
'How can they know as well as I what has to be done?' she said with energy. 'The chancel screen is beautiful, Lucy—all yellow fern and heather. You must go to-morrow, and take Sandy.'
As she spoke she threw off her waterproof and unloosed the strings of her black bonnet. Her dark serge dress with its white turn-down collar and armlets—worn these last for the sake of her embroidery work—gave her a dedicated conventual look. She was paler than of old; the eyes, though beautiful and luminous, were no longer young, and lines were fast deepening in the cheeks and chin, with their round childish moulding. What had been naivete and tremulous sweetness at twenty, was now conscious strength and patience. The countenance had been fashioned—and fashioned nobly—by life; but the tool had cut deep, and had not spared the first grace of the woman in developing the saint. The hands especially, the long thin hands defaced by the labour of years, which met yours in a grasp so full of purpose and feeling, told a story and symbolised a character.
'David won't come,' said Lucy, in answer to Dora's last remark; 'he hardly ever goes anywhere now unless he hears of some one going to preach that he thinks he'll like.'
'No—I know,' said Dora. A shade came over her face. The attitude of David Grieve towards religion during the last four or five years represented to her the deep disappointment of certain eager hopes, perhaps one might almost call them ambitions, of her missionary youth. The disappointment had brought a certain bitterness with it, though for long years she had been sister and closest friend to both David and his wife. And it had made her doubly sensitive with regard to Lucy, whom she had herself brought over from the Baptist communion to the Church, and Sandy, who was her godchild.
After a pause, she hesitatingly brought a small paper book out of the handbag she carried.
'I brought you this, Lucy. Father Russell sent it you. He thinks it the best beginning book you can have. He always gives it in the parish; and if the mothers will only use it, it makes it so much easier to teach the children when they come to Sunday school.'
Lucy took it doubtfully. It was called 'The Mother's Catechism;' and, opening it, she saw that it contained a series of questions and answers, as between a mother and a child.
'I don't think Sandy would understand it,' she said, slowly, as she turned it over.
'Oh yes, he would!' said Dora, eagerly. 'Why, he's nearly five, Lucy. It's really time you began to teach him something—unless you want him to grow up a little heathen!'