Presently she began to make discoveries: the meek apologetic person
tip-toeing about lowering windows was no other than the pompous and
lordly Mason who had so often loomed over her as an avenging deity. In
the bishop, clad in stately robes, performing mysterious rites before
the altar, she recognized "the funny old guy" with the bald head, with
whom she had compared breakfast menus on a historical day at the
graded school.
So absorbed was she in these revelations that she did not notice that she
was sitting down while everybody else was standing up, until a small
black book was thrust over her shoulder and a white-gloved finger pointed
to the top of the page. She rose hastily and tried to follow the service.
It seemed that the bishop was reading something which the people all
around her were beseeching the Lord to hear. She didn't wonder that the
Lord had to be begged to listen. She wasn't going to listen; that was one
thing certain.
Then the organ pealed forth, and voices caught up the murmuring words and
lifted them and her with them to the great arched ceiling. As long as the
music lasted, she sat spell-bound, but when the bishop began to read
again, this time from a book resting on the out-stretched wings of a big
brass bird, her attention wandered to the great stained glass window
above the altar. The reverse side of it was as familiar to her as the
sign over Slap Jack's saloon. From the alley it presented opaque blocks
of glass above the legend that had been one of the mysteries of her
childhood.
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