The priest, Father O’Connor, came in, followed by the altar boy, and Sister Angela, a very young, pretty nun who taught piano and who had been sitting at the organ with her head bent in meditation, struck up the first hymn of the service, the “O Salutaris Hostia.” Staring at her, we opened our mouths to sing, but we could only caw. Again she began, and again we cawed, this time so pitifully that even we were not sure we were making any sound at all. A third time, smiling wildly to encourage us, she tried, and we gave up altogether, and made no sound, and stopped looking at her, and looked at the floor instead. She raised both hands from the organ and tried to conduct us back into the hymn, without the music, when suddenly, from below, arose the heroic voice of Maggie Harrington, and she was joined almost at once by all the voices of the regular choir. They sang the Benediction right through, hymn after hymn, without faltering, and Sister Angela accompanied them but kept her eyes charitably averted from our faces. Later, we heard that they had begun singing where they knelt, and I have often thought of how they must have looked, kneeling up straight with their hands joined and their white-veiled heads raised to the altar, while they sang and saved the day. We four, far above them, had no courage for anything. We didn’t even have the courage to pray.

When the Benediction was over, Sister Angela rose and went swiftly down out of the loft. Almost at once, the terrible face of Sister Veronica appeared at the head of the stairs. “You made a fine show of yourselves,” she said calmly. “I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. You may come on down now.”

We trooped down, relieved that we were not to be abandoned forever in the loft but very unwilling to face the immediate future. Sister Veronica remained on the narrow stairs, and we had to press past her, touching her heavy black robes. At the door of the chapel, Father O’Connor was congratulating the heroines. He was still in his vestments, and he looked over their heads at us with a glance that was incomprehensible to me then, but that now seems to me to have borne a glimmer of amusement.

Nothing happened the rest of that Sunday. We went in to tea along with the rest of the school. I felt mournfully elevated — I did not yet know why — and I ate a great deal of bread and butter, and marked the glances of fearful speculation thrown at me by the other girls at my table. Anything might happen to me now. I might even be expelled.