Then Margaret screamed. Mrs. Bagot bent quickly to put her arm around her. She was still holding the comb, and Margaret slapped it out of her hand. Lily cried out and bent to pick up the comb, but Mrs. Bagot gave her a little push and said, “Lily, run downstairs and go into the front room and stand at the window and watch for the Bishop. Call up to me when you see him coming, and then open the front door and leave it open, and go out and stand at the gate, and open the gate for him. Go on now this minute and call me when you see him.”

As she went downstairs Lily heard her mother begin to speak in a very quiet voice that Lily associated with seriousness, and sadness, and patience, and weariness, as though she were trying to explain something that she could never explain, because it was beyond words.

Much earlier in the day, Mrs. Bagot had carried the alarm clock down from her bedroom, and she now had clocks going in the kitchen, where there was always a clock, and in the back sitting room, where her best clock, the wedding-present one, had lived for years on the mantelpiece, and in the hall, on the hall table, where a clock had never been seen before. She had been watching one clock or another all day, and all day she had felt she was losing time, but as she came downstairs now, holding Margaret’s hand and moving carefully so that they took each step together, which was difficult because the stairs were narrow and Margaret was hesitant — as she came slowly and gratefully down the stairs she saw that the clock on the hall table said five minutes to four. After all, there was plenty of time.