here was
a very fair congregation when Rosamund, Dion and Robin (in a sailor suit
with wide blue trousers) walked in together through the archway in the
rood-screen. One of the old established vergers, a lordly person with
a "presence" and the air of a high dignitary, met them as they stepped
into the choir, and wanted to put them into stalls; but Rosamund begged
for seats in a pew just beyond the lectern, facing the doorway by which
the procession came into the choir.

"Robin would be swallowed up in a stall," she whispered to Dion.

And they both looked down at the little chap tenderly, and met his blue
eyes turned confidingly, yet almost anxiously too, up to them. He was
wondering about all this whispering with the verger, and hoping that
nothing had happened to Mr. Thrush.

They found perfect seats in a pew just beyond the deanery stalls. Far
up in the distance above them one bell, the five minutes' bell, was
chiming. Its voice recalled to Rosamund the "ping-ping" of the bell
of St. Mary's Church which had welcomed her in the fog. How much had
happened since then! Robin was nestling against her. He sat between her
and his father, and was holding his father's hand. By dividing Dion from
her he united her with Dion. She thought of the mystery of the Trinity,
and then of their mystery, the mystery of father, mother and child.
To-day she felt very happy, and happy in an unusual way. In her
happiness she know that, in a sort of under way, she had almost dreaded
Dion's return. She had been so peacefully content, so truly at rest and
deeply serene in the life at Welsley with Robin. In her own heart she
could not deny that she had loved having her Robin all to herself;
and she had loved, too, the long hours of solitude during which,
in day-dreams, she had lived the religious life. A great peace had
enveloped those months at Welsley. In them she had mysteriously grown
into a closer relation with her little son. She had often felt in those
months that this mysterious nearness could never have become quite what
it had become to her unless she had been left alone with Robin. It was
their solitude which had enabled her to concentrate wholly on Robin, and
it was surely this exclusive concentration on Robin which had drawn him
so very close to her. All the springs of his love had flowed towards
her.

She had been just a wee bit frightened about Dion's return.

And that was why at this moment, when the five minutes' bell was