nt clanging of the Chapel
bell. How strange they all seemed, looking back from this safe harbour.
The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr. Crashaw, Caroline--all of them.
There the imagination set fire to every twig--here the imagination was
not needed, because everything occurred before your eyes.

She did not figure it all out in so many words at once, but the
contrast of the two worlds was there nevertheless. Why had she been so
anxious, so nervous, so distressed? There was no need. Had she not
known that this other world existed? Perhaps she had not. She must
never again forget it ...

Katherine Mark was so kind and friendly, her voice so soft and her
interest so eager, that Maggie felt that she could tell her anything.
But their talk was not to come just yet--first there must be general
conversation.

The clergyman with the white hair and the rosy face laughed a great
deal in a schoolboy kind of way, and every time that he laughed his
sister, who was like a pippin apple with her sunburnt cheeks, looked at
him with protecting eyes.

"She looks after him in everything," said Maggie to herself. He was
called Paul by them all.

"He's my cousin, you know, Miss Cardinal," said Mrs. Mark. "And yet I
scarcely ever see him. Isn't it a shame? Grace makes everything so
comfortable for him ..."

Grace smiled, well pleased.

"It's Paul's devotion to his parish ..." she said in calm, happy,
self-assured voice, as though she'd never had a surprise in her life.

"I'm sure it isn't either of those things," thought Maggie to herself.
"He's lazy."

Lazy but nice. She had never seen a clergyman so healthy, so happy so
clean and so kind. She smiled across the table at him.

"Do you know Skeaton?" he asked her. Skeaton! Where had she heard of
the place? Why, of course, it was Caroline!

"Only yesterday I heard of it for the first time," she said. "A friend
of mine knows some one there."

"Beastly place," said Mr. Mark. "Sand always blowing into your eyes."

Mr. and Mrs. Trenchard got up to go.

He stood a moment holding Maggie's hand. "If ever you come to Skeaton,
Miss Cardinal," he said, "we shall be delighted ..." His eyes she
noticed were light blue like a baby's. She felt that he liked her and
would not forget her.

"Come, Paul," said Miss Trenchard, rather sharply Maggie fancied.

Soon afterwards Philip departed. "Must finish that beastly thing," he
assured his wife.

"It's an article," Katherine Mark explained