Peggy was saying the Lord’s Prayer with evident enjoyment.  Noel listened with respect.  There was the swish of a woman’s dress in the passage outside.  He listened to that also, his dark eyes watching the half-open door.  His attention began to wander.

“Noel!” said a small, hurt voice at his side.

Noel’s eyes shut as if at the pulling of a string.  “Sorry, Peg-top!  Go ahead!”

“You mustn’t call me Peg-top when I’m sayin’ my prayers!” protested Peggy.  “I wanted you to say Amen.”

“Amen,” said Noel humbly.

“It’s no good now.”  There was a sound of tears in Peggy’s voice.  “You’ve just spoilt it all.”

“Oh, I say!” pleaded Noel.  “Well, try again!  I’ll say it next time.”

“Can’t,” said Peggy.  “It’s wrong to keep on sayin’ the same thing.”

“I never heard that before,” said Noel.

“It’s in the Bible,” asserted Peggy.

“Is it?” Noel sounded faintly incredulous.

“Yes, it is.”  There was a touch of indignation in Peggy’s rejoinder.  “It’s what the heathen do,” she said.

Noel ventured to open his eyes, and found hers fixed severely upon him.  “Well, I’m awfully sorry,” he said.  “What had we better do?”

“You’re not sorry,” said Peggy accusingly.  “Your eyes are all laughy.”

“I’ll swear they’re not,” declared Noel.  “But I say, hadn’t you better finish?  Then we can have a cuddle.”

“But I can’t finish,” said Peggy.

“Why not?”

“’Cos you interrupted, and I can’t begin again.”  There was more than the sound of tears this time; the blue eyes were suddenly swimming in them.  “And I haven’t said my hymn, and you don’t care a bit,” she said in a voice that quivered ominously.  Matters were evidently getting desperate.

“Yes, but you can say the rest,” argued Noel, with the feeling that he was losing ground every instant.  “What do you generally say next?”

“No, I can’t.  It wouldn’t be sayin’ them properly, and God doesn’t listen if you don’t say them properly.”

Here was a formidable difficulty; but Noel’s brain was fertile.  He had a sudden inspiration.  “Look here!” he said.  “I’ll say the first part again for you, and you can say Amen.  I haven’t said mine yet, you know, so it doesn’t matter for me.  Then you can go on and finish.  Will that do?”

Peggy gave the matter her grave consideration, and decided that it would.  “But you must kneel down,” she said.

There was no sound in the passage now.  Noel peered in that direction, but detected nothing.  Patiently he slipped on to his knees, and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

Considering the difficulties under which he laboured, he acquitted himself with considerable credit.  Peggy at least was fully satisfied, a fact to which her fervent “Amen”! abundantly testified.  She took up her own petitions at once quite impressively, albeit with slightly accelerated speed to make up for lost time.  At the end of her hymn she paused.