To begin with, the pattern was what Mrs Bannister had been led to expect. They were ushered on to the platform, above a huge hall in which sat nearly five hundred people – children of the school, parents, priests, casual visitors attracted by the announcement of Esther’s presence. Mrs Bannister took her seat, and immediately began describing to Esther the scene around them: she could not be unaware of the intense, keyed-up interest, down in the body of the hall, in what she was doing, and of the whispers of those who sat near her – visitors, members of the teaching order, local notables. She did not exactly play up to this audience, but she consciously included them in what she was doing; there was in her manner a certain showmanship which her more percipient friends would have recognized. Belle Bannister, they would have said, wasn’t missing this trick.

The chattering died as the Mother Superior rose to speak: the open-mouthed children, reacting to a voice they knew and loved, settled down to orderly attention. There were some routine matters to be disposed of – the date of the next term, the outstanding achievements of the one just past, some news of former school children now grown-up. Then the Mother Superior introduced Mrs Bannister and Esther, in a graceful and compassionate speech which could hardly have been bettered, and yielded all to them.

Mrs Bannister, turning aside, ‘spoke’ a few more words to Esther, while the audience watched them avidly; and then, to a generous applause, she stood up and began to speak.

She had of course prepared what she wanted to say, but even without her notes she would have found it easy: she knew already that she was talking to friends. She gave them the story from the beginning, in simple narrative – Esther’s accident, the fearful years of neglect, the voyage to America, the trials and disappointments, the final decision that, with great patience and love, had brought Esther to her present situation. There was not a sound in the hall as she spoke; occasionally she turned towards Esther, to point what she was saying, and Esther was always the perfect illustration for each phrase and each word – lovely and immobile, her face tranquil, her blind gaze steadfast; the focus now of a thousand eyes, and hundreds of advancing hearts.

“I will tell Esther about this wonderful gathering,” said Mrs Bannister, nearing the end of her story. “I will tell her that all of you” – she hesitated, and looked towards the Mother Superior, sitting a few paces from her – “that all of you are with her, that all of you are praying for her.” The Mother Superior nodded very gently at these last words: a royal acquiescence that no single person in the hall missed. “I will tell her,” said Mrs Bannister, emboldened, “that you all love her.”

If the Mother Superior had not nodded again, approving this last claim, it might have exceeded – by a single heartbeat – what was permissible: as it was, every child present, and then every adult, seemed to draw sobbing breath to endorse it. The great wave of applause that followed flowed towards the platform, and then faded as Mrs Bannister leant towards Esther, and died to nothing as she took the girl’s hand in her own.