Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/232

 The next day proved a great success, so great a success that they all decided to stay five days longer. Bessie it was who paid the expenses. It gave her pleasure, she said, and she had plenty of money. And in the end they all went back to London on the express, first class, with a compartment to themselves because Bessie felt uneasy when anyone like Mr. Blundon was put in the same compartment with her.

In Bloomsbury Bessie went to the chapel and Mr. and Mrs. Willis came home in the victoria to Sunday dinner. She did not care especially for the sermon nor for the boredom of sitting an hour and a half in a hard pew, but she had found human companionship and she told herself that she couldn't have everything. Mrs. Willis admired the brass collection and the chromos and Bessie sent her as a gift a female white poodle. It was the beginning of a great friendship. From then on Bessie attended the chapel regularly save on those Sundays when she found the effort to dress quite beyond her power of will.

She got used to the services and came to endure them but she found her real pleasure in the meetings of the ladies and all the auxiliary activities of the chapel. She could sit and drink her fill of amiable talk. And for the chapel she proved a godsend. In a congregation of small linen drapers, greengrocers and clerks, she appeared to be a female Midas. And because she wanted everybody to be happy she bought a grand new organ for the chapel and had new windows put in and presented it with a baptismal font. Out of gratitude the members