"Good afternoon, Mr. Slater," she called. "Have you come to help us?"
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Robson—Coast—afternoon, Miss Taylor. Well, Lily, Gerty, how are you, ha? How are you? Most kind of you to come, Mrs. Robson—so busy—most kind. Cold weather for the time of the year. Yes, very, ha?"
The vicar came forward firing off little staccato sentences as he threaded his way cautiously between the boxes, baskets and kneeling girls who strewed the floor. Miss Taylor held out her hand towards him, then realizing that she was alone in her action withdrew it and giggled, the blushes chasing one another in rosy waves across her face. She had been a farmer's daughter before she became a teacher, and now her appearance was reminiscent of churns and milk-pails rather than desks and blotting paper.
Mary bent down from the steps.
"Would you mind handing me some of the stars now? Yes. Well, if you don't mind, Mr. Slater, I should be grateful. There! The red ones look pretty on the green, don't they?"
She came down and withdrew a few paces into the room to inspect her work. As she stood, with her head a little on one side and her hands full of scarlet thread and tinsel, Lily and Gerty from the Glebe Farm eagerly studied her brown coat and round cap with its soft fur hoping to gain a hint for their next fashionable experiments.
Mary made her judgment critically.
"I like that so far," she said, moving forward. "But I think there are just a few things too many on the left. Supposing we finish the actual decorations first and then see what room we have for the toys. And then——"
She broke off as a door on her right opened and the schoolmaster entered the room.
He was a harmless looking man of thirty-nine or forty, with a straggling brown moustache and stooping shoulders, but his pince-nez hid restless, hostile eyes and his thin nostrils dilated whenever he became annoyed, which was almost always, because the world seemed a contrary place for those born without a talent for success.