ts as the sailor hat, never straight,
sat on her upflung head.

Isabel knew every one in Chilmark parish. Pausing before a knot
of boys playing marbles: "Herbert," she said sternly, "why
weren't you at school on Sunday?" Old Hewett, propped like a
wheezy mummy against the oak tree that shaded the Prince of
Wales's Feathers, brought up his stiff arm slowly in a salute to
the vicar's daughter. "'Evening," said Isabel cheerfully, "what a
night for rheumatics isn't it?" Hewitt chuckled mightily at this
subtle joke. "'Evening, Isabel," called out Dr. Verney, putting
up one finger to his cap: he considered one finger enough for a
young lady whom he had brought into the world. Isabel knew every
one in Chilmark and every one knew her. Such a range of
intensive acquaintance is not so narrow as people who have never
lived in a country village are apt to suppose.

Past the schoolhouse, past the wide stone bridge where Isabel
loved to hang over the parapet watching for trout--but not
tonight, for it was late, and Isabel after a "company tea" wanted
her supper: by a footpath through the churchyard, closely mown
and planted with rosebushes: and so into the church, where, after
dropping a hurried professional curtsey to the altar, she set
about her evening duties. Isabel called herself the curate, but
she did a good deal which is not expected of a curate, such as
shutting windows and changing lesson-markers, propping up the
trebles when they went astray in the pointing of the Psalms,
altering the numbers on the hymn-board, writing out choir papers,
putting flowers in the vases and candles in the benediction
lights, playing the organ as required and occasionally blowing
it. . . . Before leaving the church she fell on her knees, in
deference to Mr. Stafford and the text by the door, and said a
prayer. What did she pray? "O Lord bless this church and all
who worship in it and make father preach a good sermon next
Sunday. I wish I'd been playing with Val instead of Jack, we
should have won that last set if Jack hadn't muffed his
services. . . . Well, this curate was only nineteen."

And then, coming out into the fading light, she locked the north
door behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a
blackbird could whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B
flat. . . . Five minutes climbing of the steep brown floor of
the beechwood, and she was out on uplands in the dying fires of
day. It had been twilight in the v