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two teachers and an assistant as well, so to all intents and purposes Kit has taken away the job that gave meaning and purpose to Triffie’s life.
    â€œI’ve made up my mind I won’t let it come between us,” Trif said, confessing her jealousy back in June, when the fateful decision was made. “Our friendship means more than anything. Anyway, I got to think of what’s good for the children – of course they’re better off with a qualified teacher. You’ll be more help to Mr. Bishop than I ever could.”
    â€œIf I could give it up for you, you know I would,” Kit said with passionate sincerity. She has no idea whether those words are true or not, but they’re easy to say, since she can never be tested on them. If Kit Saunders doesn’t take the job, someone else will – an outsider, someone from away. Trif would be no better off, and Kit would go off as a stranger to some other outport, some other school.
    Kit misses Spencer College, misses Miss Shaw and the other teachers, even some of her classmates. Coming home feels like putting off her own life, postponing independence till some future date. But it also means coming home to Triffie and to Joe Bishop, and despite complications, these are, beyond even her parents, the two most important people in her world.
    The call has gone out; Triffie and a dozen others are kneeling at the mercy seat. Two years ago, Kit and Trif used to laugh together at girls who went down to the mercy seat every week, who got saved over and over. Now Trif is one of those girls; she no longer goes to Salvation Meeting just for entertainment. Something has changed in the two years Kit has been away.
    Whatever Kit’s sins – and she has them, hidden, unspoken – she will never be found here, weeping, displaying emotion like a new Sunday dress. She misses the grandeur of worship at the Anglican Cathedral in St. John’s, a loveliness of liturgy and vestment that has less to do with religion and more, she thinks, with poetry and art and theatre. These are my religion , Kit tells herself, trying out both the phrase and the sentiment for size.
    Whatever Triffie has to confess, it can’t be lust, Kit thinks. They walk home with Jacob John Russell, who is sweet on Kit, and his friend Fred Mercer, who is happy enough to go along and partner Trif. Fred is an easygoing fellow, not bad-looking, and would be happy enough to fall in love with Trif given the slightest encouragement, but he gets none. Jacob John gets none from Kit either, but that’s not because Kit lacks passion or the desire to fall in love. She has set her sights higher than Jacob John, though so far she has little to show for it.
    During her two years in St. John’s, after that first visit with its strange ending, she heard almost nothing from Joe Bishop. Not even letters – just the occasional postcard expressing sentiments so general there was no need of an envelope to contain them. Wishing her well, encouraging her to make the best of her opportunity – the sort of thing a good teacher might write to any promising former student; the sort of letter Mr. Bishop writes to half a dozen young men and women who have left his classroom.
    But when he wrote to say that the School Board finally had the funds to hire a second teacher, she knew the pieces were falling into place. All part of God’s Great Plan, Triffie might say, or the Workings of Providence, as Kit’s mother would put it, expressing the same sentiment in more formal language. Providence, Kit thinks, is a more manageable concept than Triffie’s intensely present Father God, or that meddling Jesus.
    But lately, she has begun to doubt even Providence. Could there, truly, be a Divine Hand at work bringing her home to Missing Point? Providence has apparently neglected to inform Mr. Bishop. There could be no impropriety in the schoolmaster coming to call on his young colleague, or in walking