Mrs. Goddard had not seen him at first, and for some time she remained in consultation with Mrs. Ambrose.  At last she turned and looking for Nellie saw that she was seated beside John; to his great delight she came towards him.  She looked more lovely than ever, he thought; the dark fur about her throat set off her delicate, sad face like a frame.

“Oh—­are you here, too, Mr. Short?” she said.

“Hard at work, as you see,” answered John.  “Are you going to help, Mrs. Goddard?  Won’t you help me?”

“I wanted to,” said Nellie, appealing to her mother, “but they would not let me, so I can only hold the string.”

“Well, dear—­we will see if we can help Mr. Short,” said Mrs. Goddard good-naturedly, and she sat down upon the choir bench.

John never forgot that delightful Christmas Eve.  For nearly two hours he never left Mrs. Goddard’s side, asking her advice about every branch and bit of holly and following out to the letter her most minute suggestions.  He forgot all about the squire and about the walk back from the park, in the delight of having Mrs. Goddard to himself.  He pushed the school children about and spoke roughly to old Reynolds if her commands were not instantly executed; he felt in the little crowd of village people that he was her natural protector, and he wished he might never have anything in the world to do save to decorate a church in her company.  He grew more and more confidential and when the work was all done he felt that he had thoroughly established himself in her good graces and went home to dream of the happiest day he had ever spent.  The organ ceased playing, the little choir dispersed, the school children were sent home, Mr. Abraham Boosey retired to the bar of the Duke’s Head, Muggins tenderly embraced every tombstone he met on his way through the churchyard, the “gentlefolk” followed Reynolds’ lantern towards the vicarage, and Mr. Thomas Reid, the conservative and melancholic sexton, put out the lights and locked the church doors, muttering a sour laudation of more primitive times, when “the gentlefolk minded their business.”

For the second time that day, John and Mr. Ambrose walked as far as the cottage, to see Mrs. Goddard to her home.  When they parted from her and Nellie, John was careful not to say anything more about the odes, a subject to which Mrs. Goddard had not referred in the course of the evening.  John thanked her rather effusively for her help—­he could never have got through those choir benches without her, he said; and the vicar added that he was very much obliged, too, and surreptitiously conveyed to Mrs. Goddard’s hand a small package intended for Miss Nellie’s Christmas stocking, from him and his wife, and which he had forgotten to give earlier.  Nellie was destined to have a fuller stocking than usual this year, for the squire had remembered her as well as Mr. Ambrose.