furniture, and Moxhay paid no more attention to her than the
grooms do to the clown. Miss Flaw had another peculiarity: she
silently went through a service exactly similar to ours, but much
briefer. The course of our evening service was this: My Father
prayed, and we all knelt down; then he gave out a hymn and most
of us stood up to sing; then he preached for about an hour, while
we sat and listened; then a hymn again; then prayer and the
valediction.

Mary Flaw went through this ritual, but on a smaller scale. We
all knelt down together, but when we rose from our knees, Miss
Flaw was already standing up, and was pretending, without a
sound, to sing a hymn; in the midst of our hymn, she sat down,
opened her Bible, found a text, and then leaned back, her eyes
fixed in space, listening to an imaginary sermon which our own
real one soon caught up, and coincided with for about three-
quarters of an hour. Then, while our sermon went peacefully on,
Miss Flaw would rise, and sing in silence (if I am permitted to
use such an expression) her own visionary hymn; then she would
kneel down and pray, then rise, collect her belongings, and
sweep, in fairy majesty, out of the chapel, my Father still
rounding his periods from the pulpit. Nobody ever thought of
preventing these movements, or of checking the poor creature in
her innocent flightiness, until the evening of the great event.

It was all my own fault. Mary Flaw had finished her imaginary
service earlier than usual. She had stood up alone with her hymn-
book before her; she had flung herself on her knees alone, in the
attitude of devotion; she had risen; she had seated herself for a
moment to put on her gloves, and to collect her Bible, her hymn-
book and her pocket-handkerchief in her reticule. She was ready
to start, and she looked around her with a pleasant air; my
Father, all undisturbed, booming away meanwhile over our heads. I
know not why the manoeuvres of Miss Flaw especially attracted me
that evening, but I leaned out across Miss Marks and I caught
Miss Flaw's eye. She nodded, I nodded; and the amazing deed was
done, I hardly know how. Miss Flaw, with incredible swiftness,
flew along the line, plucked me by the coat-collar from between
my paralysed protectresses, darted with me down the chapel and
out into the dark, before anyone had time to say 'Jack Robinson'.

My Father gazed from the pulpit and the stream of exhortation
withered on his lips. No one in the bod