We turned towards the door, but suddenly the remembrance of the sound I had heard came back to me, and a great fear went through me. I hurried on. Yes, it was too true; the door was locked, locked from the outside, and we were prisoners—prisoners pretty certainly for the night! I faced round upon the girls and told them.
'I remember hearing the sound of locking,' I said.
But at first they wouldn't believe me; I could scarcely believe it myself. We rattled and shook at the door in the silly way people do in such cases; of course it was no use. Then we made journeys round the church to all the other doors; none of them had been open in the daytime, so it wasn't likely they would be now. Then we considered together if it would be any use shouting, but we were sure it wouldn't be. There was no house very near the church; the Convalescent Home, on rising ground a little behind it, was about the nearest, and we knew our voices could never be heard there. And we were too far back from the road to hope that any passer-by would hear us; beside which, unluckily, it was a windy night—the wind had risen a good deal since we had come out. We could hear it outside, and it almost sounded as if it was raining too.
'There is nothing for it,' I said at last, 'but to stay quietly and make ourselves as comfortable as we can till some one comes to let us out. Mrs. Parsley is sure to miss us and send, as she knows where we are. The great thing is to keep poor Maud from catching cold.'
I wasn't cold myself; I had been moving about, and then I wasn't getting well of an illness like the girls. So I took off my ulster and made Maudie put it on. There were no cushions in the church, but we collected all the hassocks we could, and built up a sort of little nest, and then we all huddled in together. It was fast getting dark, and after we had been sitting there a while we heard the clock outside strike eight.
I couldn't make it out; they must have missed us at the farm before this. But they hadn't, and I may as well explain here—a lot of explainings together at the end are so confusing, I think—how it was. You remember my saying Mrs. Parsley had had bad news that day. Well, just as Serry called out to her that she and Maud were coming with us after all, another message had come that she must go at once to the old lady who was so ill. There was no choice, she had to go, so the horse was put to and the red-eared boy drove her off. Mr. Parsley hadn't come in, so all she could do was to tell the servant we'd all be in soon, and she must tell us what had happened, and that she'd send the cart back to the station to meet nurse at nine. Now, the servant was very stupid; she got 'nine' into her head, and when Mr. Parsley came in about half-past seven she told him we were all to be in at nine; and he said afterwards he'd got some vague idea that we had all gone in the cart to meet nurse. Anyhow, he wasn't a bit uneasy, and after he'd had his supper he set off walking to the old aunt's to see how she was, and to arrange about Mrs. Parsley staying all night if she had to.
So you see, till nurse got back, there was no one to be uneasy about us.
But we didn't know it, and there we sat, more and more puzzled, and even frightened in a strange sort of way. It seemed as if we'd dropped out of the world and nobody cared.
'At the worst,' I whispered to Anne, 'when nurse comes they'll hunt us up. She knows we were to be in the church, and she'll think of the Maggie story.'
'Only,' said Anne, 'suppose she misses her train, or that it's very late. It's Maudie I'm so unhappy about, Jack. Hush——'