As for Julian--would it be possible, Padre, to miss a person
you almost hate? Anyhow, when I tried to imagine how I should feel if I
went back to the garden and saw him dead, I grew quite giddy and ill.
How queer we are, we human things!
But no one was hurt. The whole party hid under the trees; and as the
cars were also hidden at a distance, the German fliers turned tail,
disappointed; besides, the anti-aircraft gun which we'd been told about,
and had seen on our way to the convent, was potting away like mad, so it
wasn't healthful for aeroplanes to linger merely "on spec."
Mother Beckett was pale and trembling a little, but she said that she
had been too anxious about me, in my absence, to think of herself, which
was perhaps a good thing. I noticed, when I joined them in the garden,
after the roar had changed again to a buzz, that Dierdre stood close to
Brian, and that his hand was on her shoulder, her hand on Sirius's
beautiful head. Yet I felt too strangely happy to be jealous. I suppose
it must have been through my prayer--or the answer to it.
* * * * *
When all was clear and the danger over (our guide said that the "birds"
never made more than one tour of inspection in an afternoon) we started
off again. Father Beckett suggested that his wife had better go home and
rest, but she wouldn't hear of it. And when we reached a turning of the
road which would lead us to Coucy-le Chateau, it was she who begged our
lieutenant to let us run along that way, "just far enough for a glimpse,
a _tiny_ glimpse.
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