"He had never thought that I could be a priest." Mrs.Manners considered this in silence.
"And it may be autumn before Dr.Allen's letter comes back ?" she asked presently.
Robin said that that was so.
"It may even be till winter," he said.

"The talk among the priests, Mr.
Simpson tells me, is all about the removal from Douay.

It may be made at any time, and who knows where they will go ?" Mrs.Manners glanced across at her daughter, who sat motionless, with her hands clasped.

Then she was filled with the spirit of reasonableness and sense: all this tragic to-do about what might never happen seemed to her the height of folly.
"Nay, then," she burst out, "then nothing may happen after all.

Dr.
Allen may say 'No;' the letter may never get to him.