Then Miss Strickland reined them in. She said with perfect self-control and extreme unfairness, “I don’t know what you girls are hurrying for. There is plenty of time to catch the train. Please walk at your usual pace and in your usual order.” Miss Strickland never spoke twice. She had only once said “Elsie.” When this command failed, her lips and her heart had simultaneously closed. She had made a mistake in tactics. She saw in a flash, too late to rectify her action, that she should have called “Peter!” not “Elsie!” Peter had had the strength to deny her claim upon Elsie, but he would never have had strength to deny a direct command made to himself, in a Cathedral. Onoria knew theoretically that it is always wisest to tackle the strongest of two culprits first. It was indeed her invariable and most successful practise, but her heart had betrayed her, she had struck out at her Beloved—and her Beloved had in consequence got clean away. Onoria pulled herself together when she reached the street, and made no more mistakes. Her duty was to her pupils, and she did it. Methodically, though with a heart on fire, she arranged their return tickets and marshalled them into the train. If Elsie and Peter had been on the Station, Onoria would have seen them but she would not have noticed them. She put her charges into a third class carriage marked “Ladies Only,” took a corner seat by the window, and proceeded to bone “the Messiah” for the delectation of her pupils. Her trained ear had after all enabled her to listen to it sufficiently for her to be capable of stating its faults. Onoria had no great passion for Handel at the best of times and the average grasp of a Local Orchestral Society is not the best of times for Handel, but on this occasion she was vitriolic. The girls heard her with awe. Somebody was catching it, even if they were great and dead. They would have preferred to see Elsie and Peter catching it because they were alive and lived at Little Ticklington, but they could not have everything. Destruction always appeals to the young, and on the whole they had a far better time than they had had any right to expect at an oratorio in a Cathedral. Miss Strickland saw them safely back to their respective homes. Two of the girls were boarders and these she dropped at the School gates. Then she turned hastily homewards. Samson was at her door. He was a gloomy and outraged cat, wet by the autumn mist and deprived of his invariable tea, with Mr. Gubbins’ share of cream, and a fire-warmed knee to rest up against afterwards. He did not so much miss Mr. Gubbins as actively resent him. He miaued coarsely. Miss Strickland subdued a temptation to hit him sharply on the head with her umbrella. It was quite open to her to hit him and it would serve Peter right. But Miss Strickland was a just woman; she reminded herself that the soul that sinneth it shall die.