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said, setting out cups and saucers. ‘Father get off all right, did he?’
    ‘With his fan club present,’ Sister Joan said with a grin.
    ‘Well, he’ll be missed,’ Mrs Fairly said. ‘Not that a holiday won’t do him good. It will give Father Stephens a chance to find out how he can cope too.’
    It was the nearest she would allow herself to come in expressing an opinion about the handsome young curate who was, everybody agreed, all set for a bishopric one day.
    ‘We have a new lay sister ourselves,’ Sister Joan said, remembering. ‘Sister Jerome from our London house.’
    ‘Jerome. Jerome.’ Mrs Fairly frowned slightly. ‘Now where have I—? Never mind, it’ll come to me, I daresay. Bring your tea into the dining-room Sister. I’ll just check on the oven and add a few more mushrooms for Father Timothy and then join you.’
    The dining-room at the other side of the hall with the parlour leading out of it was lined with bookshelves. Glancing at the crowded, much-thumbed volumes, Sister Joan wondered where Father Timothy was going to fit in the books he’d brought with him.
    ‘Here you are, Sister!’ The object of her musings came in, looking round with the interest of a newcomer.
    ‘There’s a cup of tea for you, Father.’ Sister Joan handed it to him. ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’
    ‘Not in Lent, Sister.’ The sandy brows drew together in disapproval.
    ‘Oh. Yes, of course, Father.’ Sister Joan looked rather guiltily into her own cup.
    ‘Mrs Fairly mentioned a mixed grill.’ Father Timothy had lowered his voice. ‘Not meat during Lent?’
    ‘It’ll be grilled herrings with mushrooms, tomatoes and sauté potatoes,’ Sister Joan said. ‘Mrs Fairly knows the rules so well that Father Malone says she could probably advise His Holiness on doctrine.’
    The jest had made everybody smile in the convent. Father Timothy merely looked uncomfortable.
    ‘Father Stephens will be along any time now,’ Mrs Fairly said, bustling in. ‘Shall I unpack for you, Father?’
    ‘Thank you, but I prefer to do it myself,’ he said stiffly.
    ‘I have to get back.’ Sister Joan put down her cup and saucer. ‘It was nice to meet you, Father Timothy.’
    ‘Thank you, Sister Joan. No doubt I will be visiting the convent in due course.’ His handshake was brief and limp.
    ‘I’ll see you out, Sister.’ Mrs Fairly went ahead to open the door. ‘You’ll give my regards to Mother Dorothy? I suppose you’ll be assigned other duties now the new lay sister has come?’
    ‘Not yet,’ Sister Joan said. ‘At the moment I’m supposed to be making myself generally useful.’
    ‘Sister Jerome.’ Mrs Fairly screwed up her eyes andpeered into the middle distance over Sister Joan’s shoulder. ‘I’ll recall where I heard that name if I don’t consciously think about it. Good morning, Sister. Drive carefully.’
    She undoubtedly sent Father Malone off every morning with the same injunction, Sister Joan thought, as she went down the path and turned back towards the station.
    In Father’s case there was good reason for such a warning since the mild little man laboured under the delusion that he was an undiscovered racing driver and flung his ageing vehicle about with the beatific smile of one who believes he’s an expert.
    Unlocking the door of the convent car, sliding her small, trim person behind the wheel, Sister Joan hoped her own standards of driving were somewhat higher. Still it was nice to know that somebody cared. Mrs Fairly, whom she scarcely knew at all, was a pleasant woman. She wondered how she’d get on with the fresh out of the seminary Father Timothy. And how on earth would Father Timothy react to the urbane Father Stephens who wore his cassock as if it were a silk robe and filled his sermons with obscure quotations?
    ‘It’s nothing to do with me anyway,’ Sister Joan informed her reflection in the driving mirror, turning off on to the moorland road that wound its wide, dusty ribbon